Carter Swaby, Bonnie Yeung-Luk, Shreeti Thapa, Kristine Nishida, Arabelis Wally, Baishakhi Ghosh, Austin Niederkofler, Sean Luk, Mirit Girgis, Allison Keller, Cecilia Cortez, Sahana Ramaswamy, Kai Wilmsen, Laura Bouché, Anne Dell, M Bradley Drummond, Nirupama Putcha, Stuart M Haslam, Rasika Mathias, Nadia N Hansel, Jian Sheng, Venkataramana Sidhaye
COPD causes significant morbidity and mortality worldwide. Epithelial damage is fundamental to disease pathogenesis, although the mechanisms driving disease remain undefined. Published evidence from a COPD cohort (SPIROMICS) and confirmed in a second cohort (COPDgene) demonstrate a polymorphism in Fucosyltransferese-2 (FUT2) is a trans-pQTL for E-cadherin, which is critical in COPD pathogenesis. We found by MALDI-TOF analysis that FUT2 increased terminal fucosylation of E-cadherin. Using atomic force microscopy, we found that FUT2-dependent fucosylation enhanced E-cadherin-E-cadherin bond strength, mediating the improvement in monolayer integrity...
November 2, 2023: bioRxiv