Structure-specific characterization and quantitation is often required for effective functional studies of oligosaccharides. Inside the gut, HMOs are preferentially bound and catabolized by the beneficial bacteria. HMO utility by these bacteria employs structure-specific catabolism based on a number of glycosidases. Determining the activity of these enzymes requires accurate quantitation of a l...

Glycosidases are widespread among bacteria. The opportunistic human pathogen Enterococcus faecalis encodes several putative glycosidases but little is known about their functions. The identified endo-β-N-acetylglucosaminidase EndoE has activity on the N-linked glycans of the human immunoglobulin G (IgG). In this report we identified the human glycoprotein lactoferrin (hLF) as a new substrate fo...

The active site residues in GH1 β-glycosidases are compartmentalized into 3 functional regions, involved in catalysis or binding of glycone and aglycone motifs from substrate. However, it still remains unclear how residues outside the active site modulate the enzymatic activity. To tackle this question, we solved the crystal structure of the GH1 β-glycosidase from Spodoptera frugiperda (Sfβgly)...

An cu-L-fucosidase has been purified from rat epididymis by fractionation of extracts with ammonium sulfate and subsequent chromatography on ion exchange celluloses. It is a glycoprotein with a molecular weight of 210,000 to 220,000 and dissociates in the presence of mercaptoethanol and guanidine hydrochloride or sodium dodecyl sulfate. The dissociated material behaves as two components with mo...

In yeast, particular emphasis has been given to endoplasmic reticulum (ER)-derived, cisternal maturation models of Golgi assembly while in mammalian cells more emphasis has been given to golgins as a potentially stable assembly framework. In the case of de novo Golgi formation from the ER after brefeldin A/H89 washout in HeLa cells, we found that scattered, golgin-enriched, structures formed ea...

B-glycosidases have been implicated in plant pathogenesis by numerous authors (6,8,9,10). B-glucosidase from Pratylenchus penetrans was reported to hydrolyse HCN from a cyanogenic glucoside (amygdalin) during pathogenesis of peach roots (7), and the activity of B-glucosidase from preparasitic larvae of Heterodera rostochiensis has been correlated with the ability to parasitize resistant potato ...

Joint diseases cause serious medical problems for several million people world-wide and therefore the World Health Organization has designated years 2000-2010 as the Decade of the Bone and Joint (Popko et al.2011). Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common, and increasingly prevalent, human joint disorder (Dieppe, 2000). It has been estimated that in 1990 12 % of Americans, nearly 21 million peopl...