Exploring the N-glycosylation pathway in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii unravels novel complex structures

Chlamydomonas reinhardtii is a green unicellular eukaryotic model organism for studying relevant biological and biotechnological questions. The availability of genomic resources and the growing interest in C. reinhardtii as an emerging cell factory for the industrial production of biopharmaceuticals require an in-depth analysis of protein N-glycosylation in this organism. Accordingly, we used a comprehensive approach including genomic, glycomic, and glycoproteomic techniques to unravel the N-glycosylation pathway of C. reinhardtii. Using mass-spectrometry-based approaches, we found that both endogenous soluble and membrane-bound proteins carry predominantly oligomannosides ranging from Man-2 to Man-5. In addition, minor complex N-linked glycans were identified as being composed of partially 6-O-methylated Man-3 to Man-5 carrying one or two xylose residues. These findings were supported by results from a glycoproteomic approach that led to the identification of 86 glycoproteins. Here, a combination of in-source collision-induced dissodiation (CID) for glycan fragmentation followed by mass tag-triggered CID for peptide sequencing and PNGase F treatment of glycopeptides in the presence of (18)O-labeled water in conjunction with CID mass spectrometric analyses were employed. In conclusion, our data support the notion that the biosynthesis and maturation of N-linked glycans in the endoplasmic reticulum and Golgi apparatus occur via a GnT I-independent pathway yielding novel complex N-linked glycans that maturate differently from their counterparts in land plants.