Understanding bacterical protein mannosylation

糖蛋白在整个生物学的细胞通讯中起着核心作用。存在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，与结核分枝杆菌的发病机制有关，并在大量其他相关细菌中发现，其功能尚不清楚。这些其他细菌拥有生物技术中使用的一些独特的代谢活动(抗生素生产、污染物降解和生物燃料生产的酶等)。这些重要细菌中普遍存在的蛋白质糖基化系统暗示着一种重要的生物学功能，这是我们试图发现的。了解这种特殊蛋白质修饰的作用可能会导致对这种修饰的操纵，以促进生物质降解、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.