Glycolipids fucosyltransferases

Different glycolipid fucosyltransferase activities have been reported (32,55,58) to catalyze the addition of fucose to position C-2 of the terminal D-galactose and position C-3 of the internal N-acetylglucosamine of nLcOse4Cer to form blood group H or human tumor-specific lipid (10). Incorporation of fucose into GgOse4Cer was also reported recently by Taki et al. 

Glycolipid Fucosyltransferase Activities in Mouse and Human Tumor Cells... 

In addition to a detailed review [22] on two glycolipid fucosyltransferases (FucTs) (Table 1 [33-41]), the following reports on substrate-specificity studies with the cloned enzymes [42, 43], identification, and cloning of new FucT activities from chicken embryos [44], murine [45, 46], Caenorhabditis elegans [47, 48], and parasites... 

Table 1. Characterization of different glycolipid fucosyltransferases (donor GDP-fucose).

M. coturnix ceramide. Intriguingly, fucosylated glycolipids obtained from E. multilocularis were found to possess only short-chain fatty acids with 16 and 18 carbon atoms (mainly 0 6 0 and C18h 0), which might indicate that the (a1-3)-fucosyltransferase involved in the biosynthesis of such compounds requires an acceptor substrate with shorter fatty acids, whereas ((51 -6)-galactosyltransferase from this source obviously accepts all kinds of galacto-sylceramide precursors (Persat et al., 1992). 

Two different glycolipid L-fucosyltransferases, involved in the biosynthesis of blood-group related glycosphingolipids, were detected in a membrane preparation isolated from a human neuroblastoma-derived clonal cell line. One catalysed the transfer of L-fucose to neolactotetraosyl- or pentaosyl-ceramide to form H-1 and B-1 glycolipids respectively. The second catalysed the transfer of L-fucose to lactotriaosylceramide to form a tetraosylceramide which was an intermediate in the synthesis of the Le -type glycolipid. 

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