Species: Ba
Applications: Enzyme Activity
Description
Hyaluronan (HA) is a polysaccharide chain composed of repeating beta 4GlcUA-beta 3GlcNAc disaccharide units with molecular weights generally ranging from ~10
4 to 10
7 Da in vertebrates and bacteria (1, 2). In animals, HA plays structural, recognition and signaling roles. Certain pathogenic bacteria, namely
Streptococcus Group A and C and
Pasteurella multocida Type A, utilize extracellular HA polysaccharide capsules to avoid host defenses and to increase virulence. It is now recognized that HA of different sizes can have dramatically different effects on cellular behavior and growth (3, 4), and vertebrates may be able to control HA size
in vivo by differential expression of biosynthetic enzymes (5). The
Pasteurella multocida HA synthase enzyme, pmHAS, catalyzes the synthesis of HA polymer by alternative addition of GlcNAc and GlcA residues to the nonreducing terminus of HA using the donor substrates UDP-GlcNAc and UDP-GlcA (6). The enzyme can also elongate exogenous HA oligosaccharide acceptors
in vitro (7, 8), therefore can be used for non-reducing end labeling of HA. The enzymatic activity of pmHAS was determined using a phosphatase-coupled assay (9).
Bioinformatics
| Uniprot |
|
| Alternate Names |
- HA Synthetase
- HAS
- Hyaluronan Synthase
- Hyaluronic Acid Synthase
- Hyaluronic Acid Synthetase
|
