Introduction of tri-antennary N-glycans in Arabidopsis thaliana plants

Because the pathway for protein synthesis is largely conserved between plants and animals, plants provide an attractive platform for the cost effective and flexible production of biopharmaceuticals. However, there are some differences in glycosylation between plants and humans that need to be considered before plants can be used as an efficient expression platform.In the presented research the human genes encoding α1,3-mannosyl-β1,4-N-acetylglucosaminyltransferase (GnT-IV) and α1,6-mannosyl-β1,6-N-acetylglucosaminyltransferase (GnT-V) were introduced in the fast cycling model plant Arabidopsis thaliana to synthesize tri-antennary N-glycans. The GnT-IV and -V enzymes were targeted to the Golgi apparatus with plant-specific localization signals. The experiments were performed both in a wild type background, as well as in plants lacking β1,2-xylosyltransferase (XylT) and α1,3-fucosyltransferase (FucT) activity. Glycan analysis of endogenous proteins in the transgenic lines using CE-LIF showed that tri-antennary N-glycans could be produced in the XylT/FucT deficient line, while these structures were not found in the wild type background. Since β-N-acetylhexosaminidases, that remove terminal GlcNAcs, are active in A. thaliana plants, the specificity of these enzymes for different GlcNAc linkages was tested. The results showed that there is no pronounced preference of the A. thaliana hexosaminidases for human-type GlcNAc-linkages.

► Human GnT-IV and -V genes were introduced in XylT/FucT-deficient Arabidopsis thaliana.
► The human enzymes were targeted to the Golgi apparatus using plant-specific localization signals.
► Both GnT-IV and -V expression yielded tri-antennary N-glycans.
► A. thaliana N-acetylhexosaminidases have no preference for human-type GlcNAc-linkages.