Kinetic basis for the donor nucleotide-sugar specificity of β1,4-N-acetylglucosaminyltransferase III

The kinetic basis of the donor substrate specificity of beta 1,4-N-acetylglucosaminyltransferase III (GnT-III) was investigated using a purified recombinant enzyme. The enzyme also transfers GalNAc and Glc moieties from their respective UDP-sugars to an acceptor at rates of 0.1-0.2% of that for GlcNAc, but Gal is not transferred at a detectable rate. Kinetic analyses revealed that these inefficient transfers, which are associated with the specificity of the enzyme, are due to the much lower V-max values, whereas the K-m values for UDP-GalNAc and UDP-Glc differ only slightly from that for UDP-GlcNAc. It was also found that various other nucleotide-Glc derivatives bind to the enzyme with comparable affinities to those of UDP-GlcNAc and UDP-Glc, although the derivatives do not serve as glycosyl donors. Thus, GnT-III does not appear to distinguish UDP-GlcNAc from other structurally similar nucleotide-sugars by specific binding in the ground state. These findings suggest that the specificity of GnT-III toward the nucleotide-sugar is determined during the catalytic process. This type of specificity may be efficient in preventing a possible mistransfer when other nucleotide-sugars are present in excess over the true donor.