Expression, purification and preliminary crystallographic analysis of N-acetylglucosamine-1-phosphate uridylyltransferase from Mycobacterium tuberculosis

The gene product of open reading frame Rv1018c from Mycobacterium tuberculosis is annotated as encoding a probable N-acetylglucosamine 1-phosphate uridylyltransferase (MtbGlmU), an enzyme that catalyzes the biosynthesis of UDP-N-acetylglucosamine, a precursor common to lipopolysaccharide and peptidoglycan biosynthesis. Following overexpression in Escherichia coli, the enzyme was purified and crystallized using the hanging-drop vapour-diffusion method. Native diffraction data were collected from crystals belonging to space group R32 and processed to a resolution of 2.2 A.