Taxonomic group: bacteria / Proteobacteria
(Phylum: Proteobacteria)
Associated disease: infection due to Escherichia coli [ICD11:
XN6P4 
]
NCBI PubMed ID: 15795227Publication DOI: 10.1074/jbc.M500964200Journal NLM ID: 2985121RPublisher: Baltimore, MD: American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Correspondence: raetz
biochem.duke.edu
Institutions: Department of Biochemistry, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, USA, Middle Atlantic Mass Spectrometry Laboratory, Department of Pharmacology and Molecular Sciences, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, USA
Addition of a phosphoethanolamine (pEtN) moiety to the outer 3-deoxy-D-manno-octulosonic acid (Kdo) residue of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) in WBB06, a heptose-deficient Escherichia coli mutant, occurs when cells are grown in 5-50 mM CaCl2 (Kanipes, M. I., Lin, S., Cotter, R. J., and Raetz, C. R. H. (2001) J. Biol. Chem. 276, 1156-1163). A Ca2+-induced, membrane-bound enzyme was responsible for the transfer of the pEtN unit to the Kdo domain. We now report the identification of the gene encoding the pEtN transferase. E. coli yhjW was cloned and overexpressed, because it is homologous to a putative pEtN transferase implicated in the modification of the beta-chain heptose residue of Neisseria meningitidis lipo-oligosaccharide (Mackinnon, F. G., Cox, A. D., Plested, J. S., Tang, C. M., Makepeace, K., Coull, P. A., Wright, J. C., Chalmers, R., Hood, D. W., Richards, J. C., and Moxon, E. R. (2002) Mol. Microbiol. 43, 931-943). In vitro assays with Kdo2-4'-[32P]lipid A as the acceptor showed that YhjW (renamed EptB) utilizes phosphatidylethanolamine in the presence of Ca2+ to transfer the pEtN group. Stoichiometric amounts of diacylglycerol were generated during the EptB-catalyzed transfer of pEtN to Kdo2-lipid A. EptB is an inner membrane protein of 574 amino acid residues with five predicted trans-membrane segments within its N-terminal region. An in-frame replacement of eptB with a kanamycin resistance cassette rendered E. coli WBB06 (but not wild-type W3110) hypersensitive to CaCl2 at 5 mM or higher. Ca2+ hypersensitivity was suppressed by excess Mg2+ in the medium or by restoring the LPS core of WBB06. The latter was achieved by reintroducing the waaC and waaF genes, which encode LPS heptosyl transferases I and II, respectively. Our data demonstrate that pEtN modification of the outer Kdo protected cells containing heptose-deficient LPS from damage by high concentrations of Ca2+. Based on its sequence similarity to EptA(PmrC), we propose that the active site of EptB faces the periplasmic surface of the inner membrane
biosynthesis, Escherichia coli, glycolipid, gene expression
Structure type: oligomer
Location inside paper: Fig. 1, right structure
Contained glycoepitopes: IEDB_120354,IEDB_123890,IEDB_130650,IEDB_130659,IEDB_135394,IEDB_135515,IEDB_141807,IEDB_150908,IEDB_151531,IEDB_176772
Methods: PCR, DNA techniques, MALDI-TOF MS, biological assays, radiolabeling, radioactivity measurement, enzymatic digestion, cell growth, enzymatic assay, centrifugation
Enzymes that release or process the structure: EptB (Ca2+-induced pEtN transferase)
Related record ID(s): 47785
NCBI Taxonomy refs (TaxIDs): 562
Show glycosyltransferases
There is only one chemically distinct structure:
Found 
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