Protein O-Fucosyltransferase 1 Undergoes Interdomain Flexibility in Solution

Lira-Navarrete E and Pallarés MC and Castello F, Ruedas-Rama MJ, Orte* A, Lostao* A, Hurtado-Guerrero* R. Protein O-Fucosyltransferase 1 Undergoes Interdomain Flexibility in Solution. Molecules. 2021; 26(8):2105. https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules26082105

Protein O-fucosyltransferase 1 (PoFUT1) is a GT-B fold enzyme that fucosylates proteins containing EGF-like repeats. GT-B glycosyltransferases have shown a remarkable grade of plasticity adopting closed and open conformations as a way of tuning their catalytic cycle, a feature that has not been observed for PoFUT1. Here, we analyzed Caenorhabditis elegans PoFUT1 (CePoFUT1) conformational behavior in solution by atomic force microscopy (AFM) and single-molecule fluorescence resonance energy transfer (SMF-FRET). Our results show that this enzyme is very flexible and adopts mainly compact conformations and to a lesser extend a highly dynamic population that oscillates between compact and highly extended conformations. Overall, our experiments illustrate the inherent complexity of CePoFUT1 dynamics, which might play a role during its catalytic cycle.

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