A Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron genetic locus encodes activities consistent with mucin O-glycoprotein processing and N-acetylgalactosamine metabolism.

The gut microbiota is a key modulator of human health and the status of major diseases including cancer, diabetes and inflammatory bowel disease. Central to microbiota survival is the ability to metabolise complex dietary and host-derived glycans, including intestinal mucins. The prominent human gut microbe Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron (B. theta) is a versatile and highly efficient complex glycan degrader thanks to the expansion of gene clusters termed polysaccharide utilisation loci (PULs). While the mechanism of action for several singular dietary glycan-induced PULs have been elucidated, studies on the unusually high number of mucin-inducible PULs in B. theta significantly lag behind. Here we show that a mucin inducible PUL BT4240-50 encodes activities consistent with the processing and metabolism of mucin O-glycoproteins and their core sugar N-acetylgalactosamine (GalNAc). PUL BT4240-50 was also shown to be important for competitive growth on mucins in vitro, encoding a kinase (BT4240) critical for GalNAc metabolism. Additionally, BT4240-kinase was shown to be essential for glycosaminoglycan metabolism, extending the PULs function beyond mucins. These data advance our understanding of glycoprotein metabolism at mucosal surfaces, highlighting GalNAc as a key metabolite for competitive microbial survival in the human gut.