N-Linked Glycosylation Prevents Deamidation of Glycopeptide and Glycoprotein

ACS Chem Biol. 2020 Dec 18;15(12):3197-3205. doi: 10.1021/acschembio.0c00734. Epub 2020 Dec 3.

Abstract

Deamidation has been recognized as a common spontaneous pathway of protein degradation and a prevalent concern in the pharmaceutical industry; deamidation caused the reduction of protein/peptide drug efficacy and shelf life in several cases. More importantly, deamidation of physiological proteins is related to several human diseases and considered a "timer" for the diseases. N-linked glycosylation has a variety of significant biological functions, and it interestingly occurs right on the deamidation site-asparagine. It has been perceived that N-glycosylation could prevent deamidation, but experimental support is still lacking for clearly understanding the role of N-glycosylation on deamidation. Our results presented that deamidation is prevented by naturally occurring N-linked glycosylation. Glycopeptides and corresponding nonglycosylated peptides were used to compare their deamidation rates. All the nonglycosylated peptides have different half-lives ranging from one to 20 days, for the corresponding glycosylated peptides; all the results showed that the deamidation reaction was significantly reduced by the introduction of N-linked glycosylation. A glycoprotein, RNase B, also showed a significantly elongated deamidation half-life compared to nonglycosylated protein RNase A. At last, N-linked glycosylation on INGAP-P, a therapeutic peptide, increased the deamidation half-life of INGAP-P as well as its therapeutic potency.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

MeSH terms

  • Amides / metabolism*
  • Animals
  • Cell Line, Tumor
  • Cricetinae
  • Glycopeptides / metabolism*
  • Glycoproteins / metabolism*
  • Glycosylation
  • Insulin / metabolism

Substances

  • Amides
  • Glycopeptides
  • Glycoproteins
  • Insulin