Primary Citation of Related Structures:   2NZW, 2NZX, 2NZY
PubMed Abstract: 
Helicobacter pylori alpha1,3-fucosyltransferase (FucT) is involved in catalysis to produce the Lewis x trisaccharide, the major component of the bacteria's lipopolysaccharides, which has been suggested to mimic the surface sugars in gastric epithelium to escape host immune surveillance ...
Helicobacter pylori alpha1,3-fucosyltransferase (FucT) is involved in catalysis to produce the Lewis x trisaccharide, the major component of the bacteria's lipopolysaccharides, which has been suggested to mimic the surface sugars in gastric epithelium to escape host immune surveillance. We report here three x-ray crystal structures of FucT, including the FucT.GDP-fucose and FucT.GDP complexes. The protein structure is typical of the glycosyltransferase-B family despite little sequence homology. We identified a number of catalytically important residues, including Glu-95, which serves as the general base, and Glu-249, which stabilizes the developing oxonium ion during catalysis. The residues Arg-195, Tyr-246, Glu-249, and Lys-250 serve to interact with the donor substrate, GDP-fucose. Variations in the protein and ligand conformations, as well as a possible FucT dimer, were also observed. We propose a catalytic mechanism and a model of polysaccharide binding not only to explain the observed variations in H. pylori lipopolysaccharides, but also to facilitate the development of potent inhibitors.
Organizational Affiliation: 
Institute of Biochemical Sciences, National Taiwan University, Taipei 10642; Institute of Biological Chemistry, Academia Sinica, No.128 Academia Road Section 2, Nan-Kang, Taipei 11529, Taiwan; Genomics Research Center, Academia Sinica, No.128 Academia Road Section 2, Nan-Kang, Taipei 11529, Taiwan. Electronic address: chunhung@gate.sinica.edu.tw.