Cloning and functional expression of a novel GDP-6-deoxy-D-talose synthetase from Actinobacillus actinomycetemcomitans

Actinobacillus actinomycetemcomitans is a Gram-negative coccobacillus that can cause various forms of severe periodontitis and other nonoral infections in human patients. The serotype a-specific polysaccharide antigen of A. actinomycetemcomitans contains solely 6-deoxy-D-talose and its O-2 acetylated modification. This polysaccharide is synthesized from the donor GDP-6-deoxy-D-talose with the relevant talosylation enzyme(s). In the synthesis of GDP-6- deoxy-D-talose, GDP-D-mannose is first converted by GDP-mannose-4,6-dehydratase (GMD) to GDP-4-keto-6-deoxy-D-mannose and then reduced to GDP-6-deoxy-D-talose by GDP-6-deoxy-D-talose synthetase (GTS). In this study, we cloned and overexpressed in Escherichia coli the A. actinomycetemcomitans GTS enzyme responsible for the synthesis of GDP-6-deoxy-D-talose. The recombinant A. actinomycetemcomitans GTS enzyme expressed in E. coli converted the GDP-4-keto-6-deoxy-intermediate to a novel GDP-deoxyhexose. The synthesized GDP-deoxyhexose was shown to be GDP-6-deoxy-D-talose by HPLC, MALDI-TOF MS, and NMR spectroscopy. The functional expression of gts provides another enzymatically defined pathway for the synthesis of GDP-deoxyhexoses, which can be used as donors for the corresponding glycosyltransferases.