Understanding bacterical protein mannosylation

糖蛋白在整个生物学中的细胞通讯中起着核心作用。 一种特殊的碳水化合物修饰，蛋白质O-甘露糖基化，在人类中是必不可少的，涉及结核分枝杆菌的发病机制，并发现在大量的其他相关细菌中，其功能是未知的。 这些其他细菌具有许多用于生物技术的独特代谢活动（抗生素生产，污染物降解和生物燃料生产酶，仅举几例）。 在这些重要细菌中存在共同的蛋白质糖基化系统，这意味着我们试图发现的重要生物学功能。了解这种专门的蛋白质修饰的作用可能会导致操纵这种修饰，以提高生物质降解，污染物降解或其他生物产品生产的其他酶的生产和分泌。

Glycoproteins play a central role in cellular communication throughout biology. The presence of a specialized carbohydrate modification, protein O-mannosylation, is essential in humans, implicated in pathogenesis of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and found in a large number of other related bacteria where its function is unknown. These other bacteria possess a number of unique metabolic activities that are used in biotechnology (antibiotic production, degradation of pollutants, and enzymes for bio-fuel production to name a few). The presence of common protein glycosylation system in these important bacteria implies an important biological function which we seek to discover. Understanding the roles of this specialized protein modification could lead to manipulation of this modification to enhance the production and secretion of other enzymes for biomass degradation, pollutant degradation, or production of other bio-products.