The major virulence factor of enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli is the heat-labile enterotoxin (LT), an AB5 toxin closely related to the cholera toxin. LT consists of six subunits, the catalytically active A-subunit and five B-subunits arranged as a pentameric ring (LTB), which enable the toxin to bind to the epithelial cells in the intestinal lumen. LTB has two recognized binding sites; the primary binding site is responsible for anchoring the toxin to its main receptor, the GM1-ganglioside, while the secondary binding site recognizes blood group antigens. Herein, we report the 1H, 13C, 15N main chain assignment of LTB from human isolates (hLTB; 103 a.a. per subunit, with a total molecular mass of 58.5 kDa). The secondary structure was predicted based on 13C', 13Cα, 13Cβ, 1HN and 15N chemical shifts and compared to a published crystal structure of LTB. Neolactotetraose (NEO) was titrated to hLTB and chemical shift perturbations were measured. The chemical shift perturbations were mapped onto the crystal structure, confirming that NEO binds to the primary binding site of hLTB and competes with GM1-binding. Our new data further lend support to the hypothesis that binding at the primary binding site is transmitted to the secondary binding site of the toxin, where it may influence the binding to blood group antigens.
Keywords: ETEC; LTB; Molecular recognition; Neolactotetraose; Protein-carbohydrate interactions.