Characterization and analysis of branched-chain N-acetylglucosaminyl oligosaccharides accumulating in Sandhoff disease tissue. Evidence that biantennary bisected oligosaccharide side chains of glycoproteins are abundant substrates for lysosomes.

Branched chain N-acetylglucosaminyl oligosaccharides accumulating in visceral and neural tissues of two patients with Sandhoff disease were isolated and quantified using high performance liquid chromatography. Detailed structural analysis of the three most abundant fractions, oligosaccharides 4, 5, and 6, was carried out using 360 MHz proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy. The biantennary bisected heptasaccharide, oligosaccharide 6, was ubiquitously distributed and a major component of the stored oligosaccharides in all tissues analyzed including, liver, spleen, kidney, lung, pancreas, and brain. This analysis indicates that glycoproteins containing biantennary bisected oligosaccharide side chains are abundant substrates for lysosomes in human tissues. Moreover, oligosaccharide 6 was the predominant storage product in brain comprising 70% of the total accumulating water-soluble glycoconjugates. Oligosaccharide 5, a triantennary heptasaccharide, had a similar distribution in visceral tissues and it was the major storage product in pancreas but was at very low levels in brain. These results suggest that the biosynthetic enzymes, GlcNAc transferase III (Narasimham, S. (1982) J. Biol. Chem. 257, 10235-10242) and IV (Gleeson, P.A., and Schachter, H. (1983) J. Biol. Chem. 258, 6162-6173), which are responsible for synthesis of these structures, have a generalized distribution with varying levels of expression in human viscera, moreover, transferase IV may have limited expression in neural tissue. The proposed structures for the branched-chain compounds are as follows. (formula; see text)