1
|
Ricard-Blum S, Vivès RR, Schaefer L, Götte M, Merline R, Passi A, Heldin P, Magalhães A, Reis CA, Skandalis SS, Karamanos NK, Perez S, Nikitovic D. A biological guide to glycosaminoglycans: current perspectives and pending questions. FEBS J 2024. [PMID: 38500384 DOI: 10.1111/febs.17107] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/10/2023] [Revised: 01/08/2024] [Accepted: 02/20/2024] [Indexed: 03/20/2024]
Abstract
Mammalian glycosaminoglycans (GAGs), except hyaluronan (HA), are sulfated polysaccharides that are covalently attached to core proteins to form proteoglycans (PGs). This article summarizes key biological findings for the most widespread GAGs, namely HA, chondroitin sulfate/dermatan sulfate (CS/DS), keratan sulfate (KS), and heparan sulfate (HS). It focuses on the major processes that remain to be deciphered to get a comprehensive view of the mechanisms mediating GAG biological functions. They include the regulation of GAG biosynthesis and postsynthetic modifications in heparin (HP) and HS, the composition, heterogeneity, and function of the tetrasaccharide linkage region and its role in disease, the functional characterization of the new PGs recently identified by glycoproteomics, the selectivity of interactions mediated by GAG chains, the display of GAG chains and PGs at the cell surface and their impact on the availability and activity of soluble ligands, and on their move through the glycocalyx layer to reach their receptors, the human GAG profile in health and disease, the roles of GAGs and particular PGs (syndecans, decorin, and biglycan) involved in cancer, inflammation, and fibrosis, the possible use of GAGs and PGs as disease biomarkers, and the design of inhibitors targeting GAG biosynthetic enzymes and GAG-protein interactions to develop novel therapeutic approaches.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Sylvie Ricard-Blum
- Univ Lyon 1, ICBMS, UMR 5246 University Lyon 1 - CNRS, Villeurbanne cedex, France
| | | | - Liliana Schaefer
- Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany
| | - Martin Götte
- Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Münster University Hospital, Germany
| | - Rosetta Merline
- Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany
| | | | - Paraskevi Heldin
- Department of Medical Biochemistry and Microbiology, Uppsala University, Sweden
| | - Ana Magalhães
- Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde, Universidade do Porto, Portugal
- ICBAS - Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas Abel Salazar, Universidade do Porto, Portugal
| | - Celso A Reis
- Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde, Universidade do Porto, Portugal
- ICBAS - Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas Abel Salazar, Universidade do Porto, Portugal
| | - Spyros S Skandalis
- Biochemistry, Biochemical Analysis & Matrix Pathobiology Res. Group, Laboratory of Biochemistry, Department of Chemistry, University of Patras, Greece
| | - Nikos K Karamanos
- Biochemistry, Biochemical Analysis & Matrix Pathobiology Res. Group, Laboratory of Biochemistry, Department of Chemistry, University of Patras, Greece
| | - Serge Perez
- Centre de Recherche sur les Macromolécules Végétales, University of Grenoble-Alpes, CNRS, France
| | - Dragana Nikitovic
- Laboratory of Histology-Embryology, School of Medicine, University of Crete, Heraklion, Greece
| |
Collapse
|
2
|
Marcisz M, Anila S, Gaardløs M, Zacharias M, Samsonov SA. Studying specificity in protein-glycosaminoglycan recognition with umbrella sampling. Beilstein J Org Chem 2023; 19:1933-1946. [PMID: 38170083 PMCID: PMC10760462 DOI: 10.3762/bjoc.19.144] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/27/2023] [Accepted: 12/07/2023] [Indexed: 01/05/2024] Open
Abstract
In the past few decades, glycosaminoglycan (GAG) research has been crucial for gaining insights into various physiological, pathological, and therapeutic aspects mediated by the direct interactions between the GAG molecules and diverse proteins. The structural and functional heterogeneities of GAGs as well as their ability to bind specific proteins are determined by the sugar composition of the GAG, the size of the GAG chains, and the degree and pattern of sulfation. A deep understanding of the interactions in protein-GAG complexes is essential to explain their biological functions. In this study, the umbrella sampling (US) approach is used to pull away a GAG ligand from the binding site and then pull it back in. We analyze the binding interactions between GAGs of three types (heparin, desulfated heparan sulfate, and chondroitin sulfate) with three different proteins (basic fibroblast growth factor, acidic fibroblast growth factor, and cathepsin K). The main focus of our study was to evaluate whether the US approach is able to reproduce experimentally obtained structures, and how useful it can be for getting a deeper understanding of GAG properties, especially protein recognition specificity and multipose binding. We found that the binding free energy landscape in the proximity of the GAG native binding pose is complex and implies the co-existence of several binding poses. The sliding of a GAG chain along a protein surface could be a potential mechanism of GAG particular sequence recognition by proteins.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Mateusz Marcisz
- Faculty of Chemistry, University of Gdańsk, Gdańsk, Poland
- Intercollegiate Faculty of Biotechnology, University of Gdańsk and Medical University of Gdańsk, Gdańsk, Poland
| | | | | | - Martin Zacharias
- Physics Department, Technical University of Munich, Garching, Germany
| | | |
Collapse
|
3
|
Holmes SG, Desai UR. Assessing Genetic Algorithm-Based Docking Protocols for Prediction of Heparin Oligosaccharide Binding Geometries onto Proteins. Biomolecules 2023; 13:1633. [PMID: 38002315 PMCID: PMC10669598 DOI: 10.3390/biom13111633] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/12/2023] [Revised: 11/06/2023] [Accepted: 11/07/2023] [Indexed: 11/26/2023] Open
Abstract
Although molecular docking has evolved dramatically over the years, its application to glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) has remained challenging because of their intrinsic flexibility, highly anionic character and rather ill-defined site of binding on proteins. GAGs have been treated as either fully "rigid" or fully "flexible" in molecular docking. We reasoned that an intermediate semi-rigid docking (SRD) protocol may be better for the recapitulation of native heparin/heparan sulfate (Hp/HS) topologies. Herein, we study 18 Hp/HS-protein co-complexes containing chains from disaccharide to decasaccharide using genetic algorithm-based docking with rigid, semi-rigid, and flexible docking protocols. Our work reveals that rigid and semi-rigid protocols recapitulate native poses for longer chains (5→10 mers) significantly better than the flexible protocol, while 2→4-mer poses are better predicted using the semi-rigid approach. More importantly, the semi-rigid docking protocol is likely to perform better when no crystal structure information is available. We also present a new parameter for parsing selective versus non-selective GAG-protein systems, which relies on two computational parameters including consistency of binding (i.e., RMSD) and docking score (i.e., GOLD Score). The new semi-rigid protocol in combination with the new computational parameter is expected to be particularly useful in high-throughput screening of GAG sequences for identifying promising druggable targets as well as drug-like Hp/HS sequences.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Samuel G. Holmes
- Department of Medicinal Chemistry, School of Pharmacy, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA 23298, USA;
- Institute for Structural Biology, Drug Discovery and Development, Virginia Commonwealth University, 800 E. Leigh Street, Suite 212, Richmond, VA 23219, USA
| | - Umesh R. Desai
- Department of Medicinal Chemistry, School of Pharmacy, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA 23298, USA;
- Institute for Structural Biology, Drug Discovery and Development, Virginia Commonwealth University, 800 E. Leigh Street, Suite 212, Richmond, VA 23219, USA
| |
Collapse
|