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Legionella effector SetA as a general O-glucosyltransferase for eukaryotic proteins

Nature Chemical Biology volume 15, pages 213–216 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

The identification of host protein substrates is key to understanding effector glycosyltransferases secreted by pathogenic bacteria and to using them for glycoprotein engineering. Here we report a chemical method for tagging, enrichment, and site-specific proteomic profiling of effector-modified proteins in host cells. Using this method, we discover that Legionella effector SetA α-O-glucosylates various eukaryotic proteins by recognizing a S/T-X-L-P/G sequence motif, which can be exploited to site-specifically introduce O-glucose on recombinant proteins.

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Fig. 1: Chemoenzymatic labeling of effector glycosyltransferase-modified proteins in host cells.
Fig. 2: SetA recognizes a S/T-X-L-P/G sequence motif.
Fig. 3: Site-specific O-glucosylation of Notch-EGF12.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Z. Luo for providing L. pneumophila strains, W. Zhou at the mass spectrometry facility of the National Center for Protein Sciences at Peking University for assistance with proteomics analysis, and the High Performace Computing Platform of the Center for Life Sciences for supporting protein structure modeling. This work is supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (numbers 2018YFA0507600 and 2016YFA0501500 to X.C. and 2016YFA0502300 to L.L.) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (numbers 21425204, 21672013, 91753206, and 21521003 to X.C.).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Ling Gao, Qitao Song, Hao Liang, Yuntao Zhu, Luhua Lai & Xing Chen

  2. Peking-Tsinghua Center for Life Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Ling Gao, Qitao Song, Hao Liang, Tiantian Wei, Junyu Xiao, Luhua Lai & Xing Chen

  3. Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Yuntao Zhu, Luhua Lai & Xing Chen

  4. School of Life Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Tiantian Wei & Junyu Xiao

  5. State Key Lab of Animal Nutrition, Ministry of Agriculture Feed Industry Center, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China

    Na Dong

  6. National Institute of Biological Sciences, Beijing, China

    Na Dong & Feng Shao

  7. Center for Quantitative Biology, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Luhua Lai

  8. Synthetic and Functional Biomolecules Center, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Xing Chen

  9. Key Laboratory of Bioorganic Chemistry and Molecular Engineering of Ministry of Education, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Xing Chen

Authors
  1. Ling Gao
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Contributions

L.G. and X.C. conceived the project; L.G. performed experiments with the help of Q.S., Y.Z., T.W., N.D., J.X., and F.S.; H.L. and L.L. performed the structural modeling; L.G. and X.C. analyzed the data and wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Xing Chen.

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Supplementary Figures 1–16, Supplementary Note 1

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Gao, L., Song, Q., Liang, H. et al. Legionella effector SetA as a general O-glucosyltransferase for eukaryotic proteins. Nat Chem Biol 15, 213–216 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41589-018-0189-y

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