title: Demonstration of the immature glycosaminoglycan tetrasaccharide sequence GlcAbeta1-3Galbeta1-3Galbeta1-4Xyl on recombinant soluble human alpha-thrombomodulin. An oligosaccharide structure on a "part-time" proteoglycan.
abstract: Thrombomodulin (TM), a cell surface glycoprotein, is a critical mediator of endothelial anticoagulant defenses occurring both as a chondroitin sulfate proteoglycan (beta-TM) and a protein (alpha-TM) unsubstituted by chondroitin sulfate (CS), hence its description as a "part-time" proteoglycan (PG) (Fransson, L. A. (1987) Trends Biochem. Sci. 12, 406-411). Sugar analysis was performed on alpha-TM to investigate a possible biosynthetic mechanism for part-time PGs. Recombinant human alpha-TM, which was expressed in CHO-K1 cells, separated by anion-exchange chromatography from beta-TM, and purified by immunoaffinity chromatography (Nawa, K., Sakano, K., Fujiwara, H., Sato, Y., Sugiyama, N., Teruuchi, T., Iwamoto, M., and Marumoto, Y. (1990) Biochem. Biophys. Res. Commun. 171, 729-737), was used for analysis. Preliminary sugar composition analysis after acid hydrolysis showed Xyl in addition to Gal, GalNAc, GlcNAc, Man, Fuc, and Glc. O-Glycosidically-linked oligosaccharides were liberated by mild alkaline treatment and purified. The isolated oligosaccharide fraction was derivatized with a fluorophore 2-aminobenzamide (2AB), resulting in two fluorescent components, a 2AB-oligosaccharide and a putative 2AB-Glc. Based on structural analysis by a combination of sequential exoglycosidase digestion and 500-MHz 1H NMR spectroscopy of the 2AB-oligosaccharide, the structure of the oligosaccharide was elucidated as GlcAbeta1-3Galbeta1-3Galbeta1-4Xyl, which turned out to represent a glycosaminoglycan (GAG)-protein linkage region tetrasaccharide common to various PGs and was considered to be a biosynthetic intermediate of an immature GAG chain. The results may indicate that at least one class of the so-called part-time PGs bear the linkage tetrasaccharide at the GAG attachment sites and that the critical determining step or the rate-limiting step for PG biosynthesis is the transfer of the fifth sugar residue, the first hexosamine, rather than xylose.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry, Kobe Pharmaceutical University, Higashinada-ku, Kobe 658-8558, Japan.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Nadanaka
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Kitagawa
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Sugahara
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D016466:CHO Cells; D002236:Carbohydrate Conformation; D002240:Carbohydrate Sequence; D002851:Chromatography, High Pressure Liquid; D006224:Cricetinae; D006025:Glycosaminoglycans / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000302:isolation & purification; D006801:Humans; D009682:Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D011994:Recombinant Proteins / Q000737:chemistry; D012995:Solubility; D018180:Thrombomodulin / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D006025:Glycosaminoglycans; D011994:Recombinant Proteins; D018180:Thrombomodulin