Mining the O-glycoproteome using zinc-finger nuclease–glycoengineered SimpleCell lines

C Steentoft, SY Vakhrushev, MB Vester-Christensen… - Nature …, 2011 - nature.com
C Steentoft, SY Vakhrushev, MB Vester-Christensen, KTBG Schjoldager, Y Kong…
Nature methods, 2011nature.com
Zinc-finger nuclease (ZFN) gene targeting is emerging as a versatile tool for engineering of
multiallelic gene deficiencies. A longstanding obstacle for detailed analysis of
glycoproteomes has been the extensive heterogeneities in glycan structures and attachment
sites. Here we applied ZFN targeting to truncate the O-glycan elongation pathway in human
cells, generating stable'SimpleCell'lines with homogenous O-glycosylation. Three
SimpleCell lines expressing only truncated GalNAcα or NeuAcα2-6GalNAcα O-glycans were …
Abstract
Zinc-finger nuclease (ZFN) gene targeting is emerging as a versatile tool for engineering of multiallelic gene deficiencies. A longstanding obstacle for detailed analysis of glycoproteomes has been the extensive heterogeneities in glycan structures and attachment sites. Here we applied ZFN targeting to truncate the O-glycan elongation pathway in human cells, generating stable 'SimpleCell' lines with homogenous O-glycosylation. Three SimpleCell lines expressing only truncated GalNAcα or NeuAcα2-6GalNAcα O-glycans were produced, allowing straightforward isolation and sequencing of GalNAc O-glycopeptides from total cell lysates using lectin chromatography and nanoflow liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (nLC-MS/MS) with electron transfer dissociation fragmentation. We identified >100 O-glycoproteins with >350 O-glycan sites (the great majority previously unidentified), including a GalNAc O-glycan linkage to a tyrosine residue. The SimpleCell method should facilitate analyses of important functions of protein glycosylation. The strategy is also applicable to other O-glycoproteomes.
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