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Updated: Jun 21, 2026

Identification and Characterization of Protein Glycosylation using Specific Endo- and Exoglycosidases
Published on: December 26, 2011
Structural analyses of enzymes involved in the O-GlcNAc modification
Carlos Martinez-Fleites1, Yuan He, Gideon J Davies
1York Structural Biology Laboratory, Department of Chemistry, The University of York, Heslington, York, YO10 5YW, UK.
None:
In order to study the O-GlcNAc modification in vivo, it is evident that a range of specific small molecule inhibitors would be a valuable asset. One strategy for the design of such compounds would be to utilise 3-D structural information in tandem with knowledge of catalytic mechanism. The last few years has seen major breakthroughs in our understanding of the 3-D structure of the enzymes involved in the O-GlcNAc modification notably from the study of the tetratricopeptide repeat (TPR) domain of the human O-GlcNAc transferase, of the bacterial homologs of the O-GlcNAc hydrolase and more latterly bacterial homologs of the O-GlcNAc transferase itself. Of particular note are the bacterial O-GlcNAc hydrolase homologs that provide near identical active centres to the human enzyme. These have informed the design and/or subsequent analysis of inhibitors of this enzyme which have found great use in the chemical dissection of the O-GlcNAc in vivo, as described by Macauley and Vocadlo elsewhere in this issue.
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