Mycobacterium tuberculosis glucosyl-3-phosphoglycerate synthase: structure of a key enzyme in methylglucose lipopolysaccharide biosynthesis.

ABSTRACT: Tuberculosis constitutes today a serious threat to human health worldwide, aggravated by the increasing number of identified multi-resistant strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, its causative agent, as well as by the lack of development of novel mycobactericidal compounds for the last few decades. The increased resilience of this pathogen is due, to a great extent, to its complex, polysaccharide-rich, and unusually impermeable cell wall. The synthesis of this essential structure is still poorly understood despite the fact that enzymes involved in glycosidic bond synthesis represent more than 1% of all M. tuberculosis ORFs identified to date. One of them is GpgS, a retaining glycosyltransferase (GT) with low sequence homology to any other GTs of known structure, which has been identified

SUBMITTER: Pereira PJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2581804 | biostudies-literature | 2008

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature