N-Acetylglucosaminidases from CAZy Family GH3 Are Really Glycoside Phosphorylases, Thereby Explaining Their Use of Histidine as an Acid/Base Catalyst in Place of Glutamic Acid
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Bibliographic record
Abstract
CAZy glycoside hydrolase family GH3 consists primarily of stereochemistry-retaining β-glucosidases but also contains a subfamily of β-N-acetylglucosaminidases. Enzymes from this subfamily were recently shown to use a histidine residue within a His-Asp dyad contained in a signature sequence as their catalytic acid/base residue. Reasons for their use of His rather than the Glu or Asp found in other glycosidases were not apparent. Through studies on a representative member, the Nag3 β-N-acetylglucosaminidase from Cellulomonas fimi, we now show that these enzymes act preferentially as glycoside phosphorylases. Their need to accommodate an anionic nucleophile within the enzyme active site explains why histidine is used as an acid/base catalyst in place of the anionic glutamate seen in other GH3 family members. Kinetic and mechanistic studies reveal that these enzymes also employ a double-displacement mechanism involving a covalent glycosyl-enzyme intermediate, which was directly detected by mass spectrometry. Phosphate has no effect on the rates of formation of the glycosyl-enzyme intermediate, but it accelerates turnover of the N-acetylglucosaminyl-enzyme intermediate ∼3-fold, while accelerating turnover of the glucosyl-enzyme intermediate several hundredfold. These represent the first reported examples of retaining β-glycoside phosphorylases, and the first instance of free β-GlcNAc-1-phosphate in a biological context. CAZy glycoside hydrolase family GH3 consists primarily of stereochemistry-retaining β-glucosidases but also contains a subfamily of β-N-acetylglucosaminidases. Enzymes from this subfamily were recently shown to use a histidine residue within a His-Asp dyad contained in a signature sequence as their catalytic acid/base residue. Reasons for their use of His rather than the Glu or Asp found in other glycosidases were not apparent. Through studies on a representative member, the Nag3 β-N-acetylglucosaminidase from Cellulomonas fimi, we now show that these enzymes act preferentially as glycoside phosphorylases. Their need to accommodate an anionic nucleophile within the enzyme active site explains why histidine is used as an acid/base catalyst in place of the anionic glutamate seen in other GH3 family members. Kinetic and mechanistic studies reveal that these enzymes also employ a double-displacement mechanism involving a covalent glycosyl-enzyme intermediate, which was directly detected by mass spectrometry. Phosphate has no effect on the rates of formation of the glycosyl-enzyme intermediate, but it accelerates turnover of the N-acetylglucosaminyl-enzyme intermediate ∼3-fold, while accelerating turnover of the glucosyl-enzyme intermediate several hundredfold. These represent the first reported examples of retaining β-glycoside phosphorylases, and the first instance of free β-GlcNAc-1-phosphate in a biological context.
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Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it