Journal of Biological Chemistry
Volume 287, Issue 52, 21 December 2012, Pages 43191-43204
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Glycobiology and Extracellular Matrices
Exploring the Unique N-Glycome of the Opportunistic Human Pathogen Acanthamoeba*

https://doi.org/10.1074/jbc.M112.418095Get rights and content
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Glycans play key roles in host-pathogen interactions; thus, knowing the N-glycomic repertoire of a pathogen can be helpful in deciphering its methods of establishing and sustaining a disease. Therefore, we sought to elucidate the glycomic potential of the facultative amoebal parasite Acanthamoeba. This is the first study of its asparagine-linked glycans, for which we applied biochemical tools and various approaches of mass spectrometry. An initial glycomic screen of eight strains from five genotypes of this human pathogen suggested, in addition to the common eukaryotic oligomannose structures, the presence of pentose and deoxyhexose residues on their N-glycans. A more detailed analysis was performed on the N-glycans of a genotype T11 strain (4RE); fractionation by HPLC and tandem mass spectrometric analyses indicated the presence of a novel mannosylfucosyl modification of the reducing terminal core as well as phosphorylation of mannose residues, methylation of hexose and various forms of pentosylation. The largest N-glycan in the 4RE strain contained two N-acetylhexosamine, thirteen hexose, one fucose, one methyl, and two pentose residues; however, in this and most other strains analyzed, glycans with compositions of Hex8–9HexNAc2Pnt0–1 tended to dominate in terms of abundance. Although no correlation between pathogenicity and N-glycan structure can be proposed, highly unusual structures in this facultative parasite can be found which are potential virulence factors or therapeutic targets.

Carbohydrate Glycoconjugate
Glycomics
Mass Spectrometry (MS)
Oligosaccharide
Parasite
MALDI-TOF MS
Fucose
Methylation
Pentose

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*

This work was supported in part by Austrian Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung Grant P20565 (to I. B. H. W.).

This article contains supplemental Figs. 1–5.