Engineering a branching sucrase for flavonoid glucoside diversification

Enzymatic glycosylation of flavonoids is an efficient mean to protect aglycons against degradation while enhancing their solubility, life time and, by extension, their bioavailability which is critical for most of their applications in health care. To generate a valuable enzymatic platform for flavonoid glucosylation, an α-1,2 branching sucrase belonging to the family 70 of glycoside-hydrolases was selected as template and subsequently engineered. Two libraries of variants targeting pair-wise mutations inferred by molecular docking simulations were generated and screened for quercetin glucosylation using sucrose as a glucosyl donor. Only a limited number of variants (22) were retained on the basis of quercetin conversion and product profile. Their acceptor promiscuity towards five other flavonoids was subsequently assessed, and the automated screening effort revealed variants showing remarkable ability for luteolin, morin and naringenin glucosylation with conversion ranging from 30% to 90%. Notably, naringenin and morin, a priori considered as recalcitrant compounds to glucosylation using this α-transglucosylases, could also be modified. The approach reveals the potential of small platforms of engineered GH70 α-transglucosylases and opens up the diversity of flavonoid glucosides to molecular structures inaccessible yet.