title: Properdin, the positive regulator of complement, is highly C-mannosylated.
abstract: Properdin is the positive regulator of the alternative pathway of complement activation. The 53-kDa protein is essentially composed of six thrombospondin type 1 repeats, all of which contain the WXXW motif, the recognition sequence for C-mannosylation. C-Mannosylation is a post-translational modification of tryptophan residues in which, in contrast to the well known N- and O-glycosylation, the carbohydrate is attached via a C-C bond to C-2 of the indole moiety of tryptophan. C-Mannosylation was first found in human RNase 2 and interleukin-12. The terminal complement proteins C6-C9 also carry this modification as part of their thrombospondin type 1 repeats. We studied the C-mannosylation pattern of human properdin by mass spectrometry and Edman degradation. Properdin contains 20 tryptophans of which 17 are part of a WXXW motif. Fourteen tryptophans were found to be modified 100%. This is the first example of a protein in which the majority of tryptophan residues occurs in the C-mannosylated form. These results show that C-mannosylated proteins occur at several steps along the complement activation cascade. Therefore, this system would be ideal to investigate the function of C-mannosylation.
authors.affiliation: Friedrich-Miescher Institut, CH-4058 Basel, Switzerland.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hartmann
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hofsteenge
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D006801:Humans; D008358:Mannose / Q000378:metabolism; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D011414:Properdin / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D011414:Properdin; D008358:Mannose