UGGT, or UDP-

glucose Glucose is a sugar with the Chemical formula#Molecular formula, molecular formula , which is often abbreviated as Glc. It is overall the most abundant monosaccharide, a subcategory of carbohydrates. It is mainly made by plants and most algae d ...

glycoprotein Glycoproteins are proteins which contain oligosaccharide (sugar) chains covalently attached to amino acid side-chains. The carbohydrate is attached to the protein in a cotranslational or posttranslational modification. This process is known a ...

glucosyltransferase Glucosyltransferases are a type of glycosyltransferase that enable the transfer of glucose. Examples include: * glycogen synthase * glycogen phosphorylase Glycogen phosphorylase is one of the phosphorylase enzymes (). Glycogen phosphorylase c ...

, is a soluble

enzyme An enzyme () is a protein that acts as a biological catalyst by accelerating chemical reactions. The molecules upon which enzymes may act are called substrate (chemistry), substrates, and the enzyme converts the substrates into different mol ...

resident in the lumen of the

endoplasmic reticulum The endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is a part of a transportation system of the eukaryote, eukaryotic cell, and has many other important functions such as protein folding. The word endoplasmic means "within the cytoplasm", and reticulum is Latin for ...

(ER). The main function of UGGT is to recognize misfolded glycoproteins and transfer a glucose (Glc) monomer (monoglucosylate) to the terminal

mannose Mannose is a sugar with the formula , which sometimes is abbreviated Man. It is one of the monomers of the aldohexose series of carbohydrates. It is a C-2 epimer of glucose. Mannose is important in human metabolism, especially in the glycosylatio ...

of the A-branch of the glycan on the glycoprotein. It uses

UDP-glucose Uridine diphosphate glucose (uracil-diphosphate glucose, UDP-glucose) is a nucleotide sugar. It is involved in glycosyltransferase reactions in metabolism. Functions UDP-glucose is used in nucleotide sugar metabolism as an activated form of g ...

(UDP-Glc) as the glucosyl donor and requires calcium ions for its activity: misfolded-glycoprotein-Asn-GlcNAc2Man9 + UDP-Glc => misfolded-glycoprotein-Asn-GlcNAc2Man9Glc1 + UDP UGGT is about 170 kDa and it consists of two structurally independent portions: a variable N-terminal portion of ~1200 amino acids, which in turn comprises 4 thioredoxin-like domains and two beta-sandwich domains, and senses glycoprotein misfolding; and a highly conserved C-terminal catalytic portion of ~300 amino acids, folding as a glucosyltransferase domain belonging to fold family GT24. Higher eukaryotes possess two isoforms, UGGT1 and UGGT2, but only in 2020 the latter was conclusively shown to be active in misfolded glycoprotein recognition UGGT is part of the ER quality control system of glycoprotein folding and its activity increases the potential for correctly folded glycoproteins. The main proteins involved in the ER quality control system are UGGT, the ER

lectin Lectins are carbohydrate-binding proteins that are highly specific for sugar Moiety (chemistry), groups that are part of other molecules, so cause agglutination (biology), agglutination of particular cells or precipitation of glycoconjugates an ...

chaperones (

calnexin Calnexin (CNX) is a 67kDa integral protein (that appears variously as a 90kDa, 80kDa, or 75kDa band on western blotting depending on the source of the antibody) of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). It consists of a large (50 kDa) N-terminal calciu ...

and

calreticulin Calreticulin also known as calregulin, CRP55, CaBP3, calsequestrin-like protein, and endoplasmic reticulum resident protein 60 (ERp60) is a protein that in humans is encoded by the ''CALR'' gene. Calreticulin is a multifunctional soluble prot ...

), and glucosidase II. UGGT first recognizes the incompletely folded glycoprotein and monoglucosylates it. The lectins, calnexin and calreticulin, have high affinities for monoglucosylated proteins and the ER chaperones that associate with these lectins assist the folding of the misfolded glycoprotein. Subsequently, glucosidase II will deglucosylate the glycoprotein. If the glycoprotein is still misfolded, UGGT will re-glucosylate it and allow it to go through the cycle again. Currently, it is unclear how UGGT recognizes misfolded glycoprotein. It has been proposed that UGGT may bind to exposed hydrophobic stretches, a characteristic feature of misfolded proteins. UGGT crystal structures and

Molecular Dynamics Molecular dynamics (MD) is a computer simulation method for analyzing the Motion (physics), physical movements of atoms and molecules. The atoms and molecules are allowed to interact for a fixed period of time, giving a view of the dynamics ( ...

simulations suggest marked conformational mobility, which could explain the ability of the protein to recognise a wide variety of client glycoproteins of different shapes and forms. The same conformational mobility could account for the ability of the protein to re-glucosylate N-linked glycans at different distances from the misfold site. See for example the picture in which glycoproteins are symbolized by nuts and UGGT by an adjustable wrench. UGGT-is-like-a-wrench-glycoproteins-like-nuts

References

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