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Perspectives on Neuroscience
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A perspective on structural and mechanistic aspects of protein O-fucosylation
Erandi Lira-Navarrete1, Ramon Hurtado-Guerrero2
1Copenhagen Center for Glycomics, Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Abstract:
Protein O-fucosylation is an important post-translational modification (PTM) found in cysteine-rich repeats in proteins. Protein O-fucosyltransferases 1 and 2 (PoFUT1 and PoFUT2) are the enzymes responsible for this PTM and selectively glycosylate specific residues in epidermal growth factor-like (EGF) repeats and thrombospondin type I repeats (TSRs), respectively. Within the past six years, crystal structures of both enzymes have been reported, revealing important information on how they recognize protein substrates and achieve catalysis. Here, the structural information available today is summarized and how PoFUT1 and PoFUT2 employ different catalytic mechanisms is discussed.
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