Submitted on May 16, 2008
Revised on August 12, 2008
Accepted on October 13, 2008
Analysis of glycosylation site occupancy reveals a role for Ost3p and Ost6p in site-specific N-glycosylation efficiency
Benjamin L. Schulz and Markus Aebi
School of Molecular and Microbial Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane 4072
Corresponding Author: aebi{at}micro.biol.ethz.ch
Asparagine-linked glycosylation is the most common posttranslational modification of proteins, catalysed in eukaryotes by the multiprotein complex oligosaccharyltransferase. Apart from the catalytic Stt3p, the roles of the subunits are ill-defined. Here we describe functional investigations of the Ost3/6p components of the yeast enzyme. We developed novel analytical tools to quantify glycosylation site occupancy by enriching glycoproteins bound to the yeast polysaccharide cell wall, tagging glycosylated asparagines using endoglycosidase H glycan release and detecting peptides and glycopeptides with LC-ESI-MS/MS. We found that the paralogues Ost3p and Ost6p were required for efficient glycosylation of distinct defined glycosylation sites. Our results describe a novel method for relative quantification of glycosylation occupancy in the genetically tractable yeast system, and show that eukaryotic oligosaccharyltransferase isoforms have different activities towards protein substrates at the level of individual glycosylation sites.