Carbohydrate-binding module O-mannosylation alters binding selectivity to cellulose and lignin

Improved understanding of the effect of protein glycosylation is expected to provide the foundation for the design of protein glycoengineering strategies. In this study, we examine the impact of O-glycosylation on the binding selectivity of a model Family 1 carbohydrate-binding module (CBM), which has been shown to be one of the primary sub-domains responsible for non-productive lignin binding in multi-modular cellulases. Specifically, we examine the relationship between glycan structure and the binding specificity of the CBM to cellulose and lignin substrates. We find that the glycosylation pattern of the CBM exhibits a strong influence on the binding affinity and the selectivity between both cellulose and lignin. In addition, the large set of binding data collected allows us to examine the relationship between binding affinity and the correlation in motion between pairs of glycosylation sites. Our results suggest that glycoforms displaying highly correlated motion in their glycosylation sites tend to bind cellulose with high affinity and lignin with low affinity. Taken together, this work helps lay the groundwork for future exploitation of glycoengineering as a tool to improve the performance of industrial enzymes.

Improved understanding of the effect of protein glycosylation is expected to provide the foundation for the design of protein glycoengineering strategies.

The cell walls of terrestrial plants primarily comprise the polysaccharides cellulose, hemicellulose, and pectin, as well as the heterogeneous aromatic polymer, lignin. In nature, carbohydrates derived from plant polysaccharides provide a massive carbon and energy source for biomass-degrading fungi, bacteria, and archaea, which together are the primary organisms that recycle plant matter and are a critical component of the global carbon cycle. Across the various environments in which these microbes break down lignocellulose, a few known enzymatic and chemical systems have evolved to deconstruct polysaccharides to soluble sugars.^1–6 These natural systems are, in several cases, being evaluated for industrial use to produce sugars for further conversion into renewable biofuels and chemicals.From an industrial perspective, overcoming biomass recalcitrance to cost-effectively produce soluble intermediates, including sugars for further upgrading remains the main challenge in biomass conversion. Lignin, the evolution of which in planta provided a significant advantage for terrestrial plants to mitigate microbial attack, is now widely recognized as a primary cause of biomass recalcitrance.⁷ Chemical and/or biological processing scenarios of lignocellulose have been evaluated⁸ and several approaches have been scaled to industrial biorefineries to date. Many biomass conversion technologies overcome recalcitrance by partially or wholly removing lignin from biomass using thermochemical pretreatment or fractionation. This approach enables easier polysaccharide access for carbohydrate-active enzymes and/or microbes. There are however, several biomass deconstruction approaches that employ enzymes or microbes with whole, unpretreated biomass.^9,10 In most realistic biomass conversion scenarios wherein enzymes or microbes are used to depolymerize polysaccharides, native or residual lignin remains.^11,12 It is important to note that lignin can bind and sequester carbohydrate-active enzymes, which in turn can affect conversion performance.¹³Therefore, efforts aimed at improving cellulose binding selectivity relative to lignin have emerged as major thrusts in cellulase studies.^14–25 Multiple reports in the past a few years have made exciting new contributions to our collective understanding of how fungal glycoside hydrolases, which are among the most well-characterized cellulolytic enzymes given their importance to cellulosic biofuels production, bind to lignin from various pretreatments.^15,17 Taken together, these studies have demonstrated that the Family 1 carbohydrate-binding modules (CBMs) often found in fungal cellulases are the most relevant sub-domains for non-productive binding to lignin,^15,17,20,26 likely due to the hydrophobic face of these CBMs that is known to be also responsible for cellulose binding (Fig. 1).²⁷Open in a separate windowFig. 1Model of glycosylated CBM binding the surface of a cellulose crystal. Glycans are shown in green with oxygen atoms in red, tyrosines known to be critical to binding shown in purple, and disulfide bonds Cys8–Cys25 and Cys19–Cys35 in yellow.Furthermore, several studies have been published recently using protein engineering of Family 1 CBMs to improve CBM binding selectivity to cellulose with respect to lignin. Of particular note, Strobel et al. screened a large library of point mutations in both the Family 1 CBM and the linker connecting the catalytic domain (CD) and CBM.^21,22 These studies demonstrated that several mutations in the CBM and one in the linker led to improved cellulose binding selectivity compared to lignin. The emerging picture is that the CBM-cellulose interaction, which occurs mainly as a result of stacking between the flat, hydrophobic CBM face (which is decorated with aromatic residues) and the hydrophobic crystal face of cellulose I, is also likely the main driving force in the CBM-lignin interaction given the strong potential for aromatic–aromatic and hydrophobic interactions.Alongside amino acid changes, modification of O-glycosylation has recently emerged as a potential tool in engineering fungal CBMs, which Harrison et al. demonstrated to be O-glycosylated.^28–31 In particular, we have revealed that the O-mannosylation of a Family 1 CBM of Trichoderma reesei cellobiohydrolase I (TrCel7A) can lead to significant enhancements in the binding affinity towards bacterial microcrystalline cellulose (BMCC).^30,32,33 This observation, together with the fact that glycans have the potential to form both hydrophilic and hydrophobic interactions with other molecules, led us to hypothesize that glycosylation may have a unique role in the binding selectivity of Family 1 CBMs to cellulose relative to lignin and as such, glycoengineering may be exploited to improve the industrial performance of these enzymes. To test this hypothesis, in the present study, we systematically probed the effects of glycosylation on CBM binding affinity for a variety of lignocellulose-derived cellulose and lignin substrates and investigated routes to computationally predict the binding properties of different glycosylated CBMs.     

A new study of the enzymatic hydrolysis of carboxymethyl cellulose with a bulk acoustic wave sensor

A new bulk acoustic wave (BAW) cellulase sensing technique, which is based on the enzymatic hydrolysis process of sodium carboxymethylcellulose (CMC) by cellulase, was established. The frequency shift curves of BAW sensor indicated that the viscosity of the tested solutions decreased during the hydrolysis process. The hydrolysis rate of CMC by cellulase was calculated from the frequency shift curves. The hydrolysis rate of CMC under different pH conditions at 30°C showed that cellulase had high hydrolysis ability approximately at pH 5.0. Kinetic parameters (the Michaelis constant K_m and the maximum rate V_max) of the process were estimated by using a linear method of Lineweaver–Burk plot. K_m is 1.95±0.25 mg ml⁻¹ and V_max is −(4.25±0.58)×10⁻³ g^1/2 cm^−3/2 cP^1/2 min⁻¹. Also the activation energy (E_a) of the enzymatic hydrolysis, with a value of 51.99±1.26 kJ mol⁻¹, was estimated in this work.     

A Perturbation Approach to Vector Optimization Problems: Lagrange and Fenchel–Lagrange Duality

Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications - In this paper, we study a general minimization vector problem which is expressed in terms of a perturbation mapping defined on a product of locally...     

Upper bounds of Schubert polynomials

Science China Mathematics - Let w be a permutation of {1, 2, …, n}, and let D(w) be the Rothe diagram of w. The Schubert polynomial ${\mathfrak{S}_w}\left(x \right)$ can be realized as the...     

Non-linear parabolic problem associated with the penetration of a magnetic field into a substance

We study the following initial and boundary value problem: In section 1, with u₀ in L²(Ω), f continuous such that f(u) + ? non-decreasing for ? positive, we prove the existence of a unique solution on (0,T), for each T > 0. In section 2 it is proved that the unique soluition u belongs to L²(0, T; H ∩ H²) ∩ L^∞(0, T; H) if we assume u₀ in H and f in C¹(?,?). Numerical results are given for these two cases.     

Efficient syntheses of imidazolo[1,2-a]pyridines and -[2, 1-a]isoquinolines

2-Aminopyridines 1a-c and 1-aminoisoquinoline with 1-chloromethylbenzotriazole give 2-amino-1-[alpha-benzotriazol-1-ylmethyl]pyridinium chlorides 2a-c and 1-amino-2-(alpha-benzotriazol-1-ylmethyl)isoquinolinium++ + chloride 12, respectively. Compounds 2a-c and 12 react with aryl aldehydes 3a-h to afford imidazolo[1,2-a]pyridines 7a-k and imidazolo[2, 1-a]isoquinolines 13a,b in good yields.     

Convenient syntheses of "heavy fluorous" cyclopentadienes and cyclopentadienyl complexes with three to five ponytails

Reactions of (eta5-C5H(5-x)Brx)M(CO)3(M = Re, Mn; x= 1, 3, 4, 5) and IZn(CH2)2R(f8) in the presence of Cl2PdL2 catalysts give the title complexes (eta5)-C5H(5-x)(CH2)2R(f8)x)M(CO3), accompanied in the case of x= 5 by hydride-transfer byproducts. Extremely high fluorophilicities are realized, and the cyclopentadienyl ligands are readily detached (hnu) from the manganese complexes.     

Determination of Partial Molar Volumes of EPA and DHA Ethyl Esters in Supercritical Carbon Dioxide

The use of supercritical fluids (SCFs) as solvents has been attracting widespread interest in the research and commercial applications. The study of partial molar volumes of solutes at infinite dilution in the near-critical region is of considerable fundamental importance, as these data reflects the interactions occurring between the solute and the solvent. Experimental measurements of partial molar volumes may be divided into two categories: direct and indirect methods. The direct methods…