Short communication: The essential role of N-glycosylation in the transport activity of bovine peptide transporter 2

Bovine peptide transporter 2 (bPepT2), which mediates the absorption of di- and tripeptides in the bovine mammary gland, was predicted to contain multiple putative N-glycosylation sites of asparagine residues. N-Linked glycosylation is proven to be essential for the folding, stability, localization, and substrate binding of nutrient transporters and could therefore potentially have an essential role in the function of bPepT2. This study investigated the effect of mutagenesis of N-glycosylation sites on the transport function of bPepT2 in Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells. The bPepT2 cDNA was cloned and sequenced. BioXM (http://202.195.246.60/BioXM/) and TMHMM (http://www.cbs.dtu.dk/services/TMHMM-2.0/) software were used to predict the AA composition and transmembrane domain of bPepT2, respectively. The AA sequence of bPepT2 was predicted to have 12 transmembrane domains, with a large extracellular loop between the ninth and tenth transmembrane domains. All 5 putative N-glycosylation sites in this loop were altered by site-directed mutagenesis, and the mutant construct was transfected into CHO cells for transport activity assay. Compared with the wild type, the bPepT2 mutant had significantly lower uptake activity of β-alanyl-l-lysyl-Nε-7-amino-4-methyl-coumarin-3-acetic acid (β-Ala-Lys-AMCA), a model dipeptide. Treatment with tunicamycin, an inhibitor of N-linked glycosylation, reduced the uptake of β-Ala-Lys-AMCA in CHO cells relative to the control group. Kinetic studies indicated that the Michaelis constant of bPepT2 was not affected by the mutation (98.03 ± 8.30 and 88.33 ± 4.23 µM for the wild type and the mutant, respectively), but the maximum transport activity was significantly reduced (40.29 ± 8.30 and 13.02 ± 2.95 pmol/min per milligram of protein for the wild type and the mutant, respectively). In summary, this study demonstrated that N-glycosylation is critical for the function of bPepT2.