Abstract
Glycosylation occurring at either lipids, proteins, or sugars plays important roles in many biological systems. In nature, enzymatic glycosylation is the formation of a glycosidic bond between the anomeric carbon of the donor sugar and the functional group of the sugar acceptor. This study found novel glycoside anomers without an anomeric carbon linkage of the sugar donor. A glycoside hydrolase (GH) enzyme, amylosucrase from Deinococcus geothermalis (DgAS), was evaluated to glycosylate ganoderic acid F (GAF), a lanostane triterpenoid from medicinal fungus Ganoderma lucidum, at different pH levels. The results showed that GAF was glycosylated by DgAS at acidic conditions pH 5 and pH 6, whereas the activity dramatically decreased to be undetectable at pH 7 or pH 8. The biotransformation product was purified by preparative high-performance liquid chromatography and identified as unusual α-glucosyl-(2→26)-GAF and β-glucosyl-(2→26)-GAF anomers by mass and nucleic magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. We further used DgAS to catalyze another six triterpenoids. Under the acidic conditions, two of six compounds, ganoderic acid A (GAA) and ganoderic acid G (GAG), could be converted to α-glucosyl-(2→26)-GAA and β-glucosyl-(2→26)-GAA anomers and α-glucosyl-(2→26)-GAG and β-glucosyl-(2→26)-GAG anomers, respectively. The glycosylation of triterpenoid aglycones was first confirmed to be converted via a GH enzyme, DgAS. The novel enzymatic glycosylation-formed glycoside anomers opens a new bioreaction in the pharmaceutical industry and in the biotechnology sector.