4.1. Glucosynthases
The first glycosynthase was described in 1998 and was derived from β-glycosidase Abg, from Agrobacterium sp., by mutation of the enzyme nucleophile, E358, from glutamate to alanine. [
58] This enzyme is a genetically engineered exo-glycosidase capable of synthesising oligosaccharides through utilisation of an activated glycosyl donor, like α-D-glucosyl fluoride (GlcF) with a range of carbohydrate alcohols, in an anomeric configuration opposite to the natural substrate (
Figure 11). The glycosynthase is unable to hydrolyse reaction products due to mutation of the catalytic residue, resulting in an inability to form the requisite R-glycosyl-enzyme intermediate (
Figure 11). [
56,
58]
Other notable glycosynthases are β-1,2 glycosynthases, which improved the bioavailability of various phenolic compounds that are known to have positive impacts on human health.
One interesting example in the glucotolerant β-glucosidase (BGL-1) from the ascomycete fungus Talaromyces amestolkiae, heterologously expressed in Pichia pastoris [
59]. This was genetically modified to produce a synthase (BGL-1-E521G) with high regioselectivity to β-1,2 transglycosylation. Using as acceptors epigallocatechin gallate (EGCC) compounds, the synthase was able to synthesize mono- and di-glucoside molecules (
Figure 12) [
59].
Another interesting glycosynthases are focused on a β-1,3 or β-1,4 specificity, for example in glucan synthesis [
56,
60,
61]. A Hordeum vulgare E231G synthase mediated self-condensation of α-laminaribiosyl fluoride and 3-thio-α-laminaribiosyl fluoride to polymers with different polymerization degree. Also, production of mixed-linked 1,3-1,4 β-glucans from di-, tri- and tetra- saccharide donors has been achieved, whereby tuning of the β-1,3 and β-1,4 linkage ratio produced glucans that do not occur in nature.
Recently, progress has been made towards the development of β-1,3-glucan synthases employing thermo-resistant β-glucosidases as native enzymes, with the in situ formation of glycosyl formate donors allowed the use of both the fluoride donor or an exogenous formate nucleophile to produce a β-1,3 disaccharide. [
60,
61]
On the other hand, there are also glycosynthases derived from endo-glycosidases. These types of enzymes enable the use of oligosaccharides of different degree of polymerizations to act as glycosyl donors. The first glycosynthase reported to efficiently promote the self-condensation of oligosaccharide donors into polysaccharides was constructed by generating the E197A mutant of the retaining cellulase, Cel7B, of Humicola insolens (HiCel7B) (
Figure 13) [
62]. This powerful glycosynthase catalyses the transfer of α-cellobiosyl and α-lactosyl fluorides (CelF and LacF, respectively) to a variety of substrates, resulting in the formation of a β-1,4 glycosidic linkage (β-1,4 glycosynthases).
4.2. Galactosynthases
Functional oligosaccharides and glycans such as galacto-N-biose (GNB) and lacto-N-biose (LNB) glycoconjugates are important carbohydrates derivatives that are present in a wide scope of bioactive compounds. Thus, the straightforward access to this type of scaffolds is crucial, with versatile applications in medicinal chemistry and biology [
63,
64,
65,
66,
67]. So, Y-W. Kim et al [
68] studied a new route to access D-Lacto- and D-Galacto-N-bioside glycans (D-LNB and D-GNB, respectively) involving an enzymatic pathway. In particular, glycosynthases have revealed to be useful in the preparation of several oligosaccharides and other glycoconjugates [
69,
70,
71,
72,
73,
74], since they possess relevant transglycosylation activity with glycosyl fluorides or glycosyl azides with no appearing hydrolysis, giving opportunity for the synthesis of galactosyl β-1,3-linked transfer products, such as D-LNB and D-GNB. The authors described the synthesis of a galactosynthase derived from glycoside hydrolase (GH) family 35 β-galactosidase. For that, a β-galactosidase from Bacillus circulans mutant (BgaC), where Ala, Gly, and Ser were inserted as substitution of catalytic nucleophiles, was used to explore the potential catalytic activity when α-D-galactopyranosyl fluoride (αGF) and 4-nitrophenyl β-d-glucopyranoside (pNβG) were used as the sugar donor and acceptor, respectively.
After the reaction completion, BgaC synthase bearing Ala and Ser did not yield the desired transfer products, leading only to hydrolysis of the sugar donor (αGF). The one bearing Gly, indeed generated a transfer product and after careful LC-MS analysis by the authors, the observed product was a disaccharide bearing different glycosidic linkages from pNβG. [
75]
To further expand the selectivity studies using this BgaC bearing Gly, eighteen different aryl sugar acceptors were employed using αGF as the sugar donor at 25ºC for 5h, with 5 glycosides being identified as acceptors for this BgaC. Thus, these five acceptors were then used to perform the transfer reaction leading to ten different products (1a-1e and 2a-2e) bearing the β-1,3-linkage, which was confirmed by 13C-NMR (
Figure 14). Analysis by HPLC and LC-MS also overruled the formation of trisaccharide. [
75]
Regarding catalytic efficiency, BgaC-Gly revealed to perform better when α-configured glycosides were used. Thus, the authors were able to develop an unprecedented synthesis of a galactosynthase derived from glycoside hydrolase (GH) family 35 β-galactosidase, which was able to generate transfer products bearing the desired bearing the β-1,3-linkage. Furthermore, para-nitrophenol-αLNB and para-nitrophenol-αGNB were obtained in up to 98% yield. [
75]
Given the versatility of β-galactosidase from Bacillus circulans mutant (BgaC), P. Bojarová et al [
76] reported the synthetic application of this mutant enzymes for the transformation of α-galactosyl fluoride (αGF) and β-galactosyl azide (βGN3) α-galactosyl, to test the glycosynthase activity. For those three different mutants were obtained using selective mutagenesis, by active site modification to glycine, alanine and threonine, and then applied in the transformation. Still, these donors were not successful and instead, two mutants (bearing glycine and threonine) were employed in the selective synthesis of azido-functionalized N-acetyllactosamine using the p-nitrophenyl β-d-galactoside as a galactosyl donor (
Figure 15).
Furthermore, unexpectedly the prepared mutants still retained a minor part of their hydrolytic activity, which can justify why these (αGF and βGN3) were not successful donors. The authors studied this behavior by molecular docking. Thus, the results published by the authors highlight that the catalytic nucleophile may not be entirely valid to all glycosidases but instead structural interactions in the active site should be judged. [
76]
In order to achieve the synthesis of valuable α-galactosyl oligosaccharides, [
77,
78] a glycosynthase from Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron glycoside hydrolase family (GH) 97 (BT synthase) was used in combination with β-galactosyl azide (βGN3) and a-galactosyl fluoride (αGF) as donors, and lactose as acceptor with assistance of external anions. In this case as previously observed, formate proved to be the best assistant for attaining the desired oligosaccharides in the transglycosylation. Even though, inhibition of the donor cleavage reaction is better performed by the azide that by the formate, an accumulation of βGN3 was observed when this was used, with a low yield of transfer product. To justify these results, the authors performed kinetic studies that suggested the formation of a complex between the enzyme, βGN3 and lactose, which limited the transfer reaction in the azide-rescued reaction. [
78]
In this way, GT synthase was able to produce α-galactosides via formate-rescued transglycosylation was achieved in 90% yield using xylose or lactose as acceptor with galactosyl fluoride as donor.
4.3. Fucosynthases
Asparagine-linked glycosylation, also known as N-glycosylation, is one of the most prevalent protein post-translational modifications in mammals and plays a key role in regulating the intrinsic properties and biological functions of basic proteins. [
79,
80] In particular, core fucosylation linking 16-linked fucose to the deepest asparagine-linked N-acetylglucosamine (GlcNAc) moiety in N-glycans is an important modification of N-glycoproteins. Intriguing evidence suggests that core glycoprotein fucosylation regulates diverse cellular functions. For instance, several studies have shown that increased association with core fucosylation is often associated with the development of cancer. [
81,
82,
83]
However, the synthesis of a well-defined fucosylated core glycoprotein structure remains a challenging task due to the complexity in multiphase chemical synthesis or the inability of the biosynthetic 16-fucosyltransferase (FUT8) to directly fucosylate full-size mature N-glycans. [
84,
85,
86,
87] For this reason a method for direct fucosylation of intact glycopeptides and glycoproteins is highly desirable.
Following this approach, the investigation group formed by Wang and coworkers [
88], describes the design and generation of potential α1,6-fucosynthase and fucoligase for direct core fucosylation of intact N-glycoproteins without product hydrolysis by using novel mutants derived from Lactobacillus casei α-fucosidase.
Firstly, they created several mutants of the L. casei 1,6-fucosidase glycosynthase and glycoligase and they assessed those enzymes' capacity to core fucosylate a range of acceptor substrates (
Figure 16).
Following the glycosynthase concept proposed by Withers and co-workers,[
89] they performed site-directed mutagenesis at the identified nucleophile in the AlfC α1,6-fucosidase, D200, to generate selected mutants, including D200G, D200S, D200A, and D200T. Similar to this, specific mutants at the putative generic acid/base residue, E274, such as E274A, E274S, E274G, and E274D, were created to provide potential glycoligases. Except for E274D, none of these mutants showed more than traces of residual hydrolysis activity due to mutations at the critical residues. In addition, this study confirmed that the D200 residue is the nucleophile and that the E274 residue is most likely the general acid/base.
Therefore, they assessed the synthesized mutants as potential glycosynthases or glycoligases. Thus, the potential glycosylation activity of the nucleophilic mutants, including D200G, D200S, D200A, and D200T, was tested using both the β-glycosyl azide and the β-glycosyl fluoride as the donor substrates and the Fmoc-Asn(GlcNAc)-OH as the acceptor substrate (
Figure 17). No glycosylation products were observed in any of the cases studied, and this finding indicated that the nucleophilic mutants tested did not act as a glycosynthase. Then, they tested the use of α-fucosyl fluoride as the donor substrate (
Figure 17). Interestingly, the E274A mutant displayed good enzymatic activity to transfer a fucose residue to the GlcNAc moiety of acceptor, resulting in the disaccharide Fucα1,6GlcNAc-Asn with regio- and stereospecificity (
Figure 17). Similar outcomes were produced by the other two mutants, E274G and E274S, which were likewise effective α1,6-fucosylation catalysts.
In addition, they found that the AlfC mutants (E274A, E274G, and E274S) only displayed reduced activity in the absence of the GlcNAc acceptor. While the wild-type AlfC could promptly hydrolyze the donor substrate, it hydrolyzed -fucosyl fluoride slowly. These findings collectively suggested that the AlfC mutations represented a class of distinct O-fucoligase for core fucosylation, able to utilise inexpensive synthetic -fucosyl fluoride as the donor substrate rather than the pricey GDP-fucose as required by the α1,6-fucosyltransferase (FUT8).
Simultaneously, they tested if the mutants could also fucosylate the GlcNAc moiety in the setting of different peptides sequences. The Endo-F3 D165A glycosynthase may use the Fucα1,6GlcNAc-peptides as excellent acceptor substrates to produce core-fucosylated complex N-glycopeptides (
Figure 17). Finally, authors demonstrate the potential applicability of the fucoligase E274A to site-specific incorporate a core fucose to complex oligosaccharide moiety in N-glycopeptides (
Figure 18). Furthermore, experimental evidence revealed that in the glycoligase-catalyzed fucosylation, the fucose moiety was in fact added particularly to the innermost Asn-linked GlcNAc moiety of the glycopeptide
These strategy was successfully extended in the selective glycosylation of proteins and antibodies [
89].
4.4. Chitinases
Chitinases are glycoside hydrolases (GH) that catalyze the hydrolysis of chitin generating chito-oligosaccharides (COS). Chitin and chitosans, its partially deacetylated derivates, are present in most living organisms, including bacteria, fungi, plants and animals [
90,
91] and exhibit immunostimulant activities in mammals and plants [
92,
93]. In addition, several studies have shown that their breakdown products, COS, have antimicrobial and antitumor activities in animals, immunoenhancing effects in humans as dietary supplements [
94,
95,
96,
97,
98], and disease protective responses in plants [
99,
100], which makes them suitable for agriculture and medicine applications [
101,
102,
103,
104,
105]. Most of their biological activities require degrees of polymerization larger than the tetrasaccharide [
92]. However, this is difficult to produce in a chemical synthesis due to the water insolubility of the products is higher as the degree of polymerization (DP) increases. Thus, in the search for bioactive COS production, enzymatic synthesis represents a potential strategy through the transglycosylation activity of chitinases [
106].
For this purpose, several research groups have studied the glycosynthase activity of various chitinases to obtain long-chain oligomers with potential biological applications.
Alsina et al. [
92] have studied the glycosynthase-like activity of six chitinases of glycosyl hydrolases family 18 (GH18) to obtain larger oligomers or polymers which could be more resistant. They selected four and two endo-chitinases from bacterial and archaeal origin, respectively, and then mutated the catalytic assisting residue to alanin. Thus, the hydrolase activity would be reduced and an oxazoline derivate could be provided, which would act as a donor substrate for a condensation with an acceptor, catalyzing the polymerization reaction (
Figure 19).
The enzymes selected were Bacillus circulans, Serratia proteamaculans ChiD, Laceyella putida ChiA, Serratia marcescens ChiC, Pyrococcus furiosus ChiB and Thermococcus kodakaraensis ChiA. Among them, LpChiA, SmChiC and PfChiB have not reported TG activity on chitooligosaccharide (COS) substrates.
In relation to hydrolase activity, two types of tetrasaccharides were used as substrates, finding that all enzymes showed activity, especially BcChiA, LpChiA and SmChiC. Regarding to glycosynthase activity, the substrate used was pentaacetylchitopentaose oxazoline (DP5ox). After two hours of reaction, the authors found that a mixture of COS was generated for all mutant enzymes, from DP5 to DP15, being DP10, DP7 and DP8 the main products. However, due to residual hydrolase activity, after 18 h of incubation lower than expected yields for the DP>10 products were obtained as a result of hydrolysis and transglycosylation reactions. The best result was obtained for TkChiA, with a yield of 55% for DP10 after 18 hours.
The method followed by the authors performing a single mutation at the assistant residue in GH18 chitinases does not seem adequate to obtain COS with larger DP due to the residual presence of hydrolase activity in the mutant enzymes. Further mutations would be needed to avoid the hydrolyzation and enhance the glycosynthase-like activity.
In a new approach, the group of Alsina et al. [
107] focused on the study of bacterial enzyme SpChiD. It had been shown that a single mutation in the assistant residue did not eliminate the hydrolase activity, so a different strategy was tested. For this purpose, different active sites were mutated to achieve a greater reduction in the hydrolase activity. In addition to mutation D151A already performed, others were added based on previous studies and simulations model that would enhance TG and decrease hydrolase activities.
A second generation of 4 mutants with an additional mutation in each of them (S110G/D151A, G113S/D151A, F119A/D151A and D149A/D151A) was performed. In one of the mutants (D149A/D151A), significant improvements in the wanted activity were achieved, obtaining DP10 as the majority product with the best ratio and an insoluble product yield of 30%. This enzyme was selected to design a third generation of new mutants. The triple mutants had reduced hydrolase activity compared to the previous mutants. Glycosynthase activity also improved, except in two of them. After 18 h, precipitate yields of 22 to 68% were obtained, with DP10 as the major product and getting the best results for Y154W/D149A/D151A and Y28A/D149A/D151A.
The chitinases engineered in this third generation have better oligomerization yields than those of a single mutation and also than those of any reported GH18 transglycosylating chitinase.
Thus, through a series of targeted mutations, it has been possible to design hybrids with better glycosyl synthase-like activity, but a further reduction in hydrolase activity would still be necessary for the designed mutants to have truly applicable activity.
Following a similar strategy, Ohnuma et al. [
108], mutated GH19 chitinases from Bryum coronatum (BcChi-A) to obtain chitin oligosaccharides using successfully 4,6-dimethoxy-1,3,5-triazin-2-yl α-chitobioside [DMT- α-(GlcNAc)2] as a donor substrate (
Figure 20).
Single and double mutants were created by changing the catalytic base (Glu70) and the residue Ser102, which acts fixing a water molecule. In a previous study, the authors had demonstrated that the single mutants showed glycosynthase activity with α-(GlcNAc)2 fluoride as donor substrate. In this paper, the authors tested these single mutants and new double mutants with DMT- α-(GlcNAc)2 to obtain (GlcNAc)4, which were designed to improve the activity of the single ones.
Single mutants did not show glycosynthase activity with the substrate after 48 h of reaction. However, the double mutants (E70G/S102A and E70G/S102C) showed activity and (GlcNAc)4 was obtained as the mayor product. For E70G/S102A, the production yield of (GlcNAc)4 was 22.4%. Small-chain oligosaccharides were also obtained as secondary products, showing the presence of residual hydrolase activity in the mutants, although much lower compared to wild-type enzyme.
Thus, the introduction of well-studied combined mutations in different glycosyl hydrolases, such as the chitinases used in the described studies, can strongly reduce the hydrolase activity, and generate glycosynthase-like activity in the new mutants, which allows to obtain oligosaccharides and long-chain glycoconjugates from different substrates.