Expression of A Human Mitochondrial N-acetylglucosamine Transferase in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Abstract:

N-acetylglucosamine（O-GlcNAc） modification on protein serines/threonines is a dynamic，inducible and abundant post-translational modification，which is found on numerous cytoplasm and nucleus proteins，regulating many cellular process. It has demonstrated that O-GlcNAc plays important roles in some human diseases，such as diabetes and neurodegenerative. O-GlcNAcylation cycle is regulated by O-GlcNAc transferase（OGT） and O-GlcNAcase（OGA） in vivo. There are three isoforms of OGT have been found in mammalian cell. They are nucleoplasmic OGT（ncOGT），mitochondrial OGT（mOGT） and shorter OGT（sOGT）. We have expressed mOGT in yeast cells with a final goal to study its biological function. A certain number of yeast proteins were clearly revealed in mOGT overexpressed cells，demonstrating the activity of mOGT in yeast cells. Furthermore，it was found that human mOGT protein inhibited the cell growth of yeast. This humanized yeast strain can be used for studying the biological function and the regulation mechanism of human mOGT.