Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a traditional yeast that is a well-established eukaryotic model system and was the first eukaryotic organism whose genome was sequenced. This yeast has been widely used for the recombinant protein expression (Romanos et al....
Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a traditional yeast that is a well-established eukaryotic model system and was the first eukaryotic organism whose genome was sequenced. This yeast has been widely used for the recombinant protein expression (Romanos et al. 1992). Mannsoylphosphorylated glycans are found in fungi including yeast, and the removal of mannosylphosphates from glycans is a prerequisite for yeast glyco-engineering to produce human-compatible glycoproteins. The MNN4 and the MNN6 genes have been known to play important roles in mannosylphosphorylation in the traditional yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, but disruption of these genes did not completely remove the mannosylphosphates in N-glycans. This study was performed to find unknown key gene(s) involved in N-glycan mannosylphosphorylation in S. cerevisiae. For this purpose, I constructed the quadruple-disrupted och1Δmnn1Δmnn4Δmnn6Δ strain by disrupting MNN4 and MNN6 genes from the och1Δmnn1Δ strain in which yeast-specific hyper-mannosylated glycan and immunogenic (1,3)-mannose structures were already abolished. However, yeast-specific mannosylphosphorylated N-glycan structures were still observed in the och1Δmnn1Δmnn4Δmnn6Δ strain, which suggests that there is another unknown gene involved in mannosylphosphorylation. From the och1Δmnn1Δmnn4Δmnn6Δ strain, I further disrupted the genes (MNN14, YUR1, KTR2, KTR4, KTR5, or KTR7) having homology with MNN4 or MNN6 genes. Analyses of N-glycans obtained from cell wall mannoproteins of six quintuple-disrupted strains showed that mannosylphosphorylated glycan structure was completely abolished only in the och1Δmnn1Δmnn4Δmnn6Δmnn14Δ strain, indicating that MNN14 gene, a MNN4 paralog with unknown function, is essential for mannosylphosphorylation. Moreover, it was found that double disruption of MNN4 and MNN14 genes was enough to eliminate N-glycan mannosylphosphorylation. Further, I also showed that either MNN4 or MNN14 gene expression restored mannosylphosphorylation in the quadruple-disrupted och1Δmnn1Δmnn4Δmnn14Δ strain, which supports that MNN4 and MNN14 can play a redundant role for mannosylphosphorylation. My results suggest that the och1Δmnn1Δmnn4Δmnn14Δ strain, in which all yeast-specific N-glycan structures including mannosylphosphorylation were abolished, may have a promise as an useful platform for glyco-engineering to produce therapeutic glycoproteins with human-compatible N-glycans.