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Lookup NU author(s): Cassie Bakshani, Maria Zakhour, Dr David BolamORCiD, Dr Lucy Crouch
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© The Author(s) 2025. Akkermansia muciniphila is a human microbial symbiont residing in the mucosal layer of the large intestine. Its main carbon source is the highly heterogeneous mucin glycoprotein, and it uses an array of carbohydrate-active enzymes and sulfatases to access this complex energy source. Here we describe the biochemical characterization of 54 glycoside hydrolases, 11 sulfatases and 1 polysaccharide lyase from A. muciniphila to provide a holistic understanding of their carbohydrate-degrading activities. This was achieved using a variety of liquid chromatography techniques, mass spectrometry, enzyme kinetics and thin-layer chromatography. These results are supported with A. muciniphila growth and whole-cell assays. We find that these enzymes can act synergistically to degrade the O-glycans on the mucin polypeptide to completion, down to the core N-acetylgalactosaime. In addition, these enzymes can break down human breast milk oligosaccharide, ganglioside and globoside glycan structures, showing their capacity to target a variety of host glycans. These data provide a resource to understand the full degradative capability of the gut microbiome member A. muciniphila.
Author(s): Bakshani CR, Ojuri TO, Pilgaard B, Holck J, McInnes R, Kozak RP, Zakhour M, Cakaj S, Kerouedan M, Newton E, Bolam DN, Crouch LI
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Nature Microbiology
Year: 2025
Volume: 10
Pages: 585-598
Online publication date: 31/01/2025
Acceptance date: 10/12/2024
Date deposited: 18/02/2025
ISSN (electronic): 2058-5276
Publisher: Springer Nature
URL: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-024-01911-7
DOI: 10.1038/s41564-024-01911-7
Data Access Statement: The full RNA-seq data are provided in Supplementary Data 1 and submitted to https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/browser/home with accession number PRJEB76658. Source data are provided with this paper.
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