A Glycolipid Glycosyltransferase with Broad Substrate Specificity from the Marine Bacterium “Candidatus Pelagibacter sp.” Strain HTCC7211

In the marine environment, phosphorus availability significantly affects the lipid composition in many cosmopolitan marine heterotrophic bacteria, including members of the SAR11 clade and the Roseobacter clade. Under phosphorus stress conditions, nonphosphorus sugar-containing glycoglycerolipids are substitutes for phospholipids in these bacteria. Although these glycoglycerolipids play an important role as surrogates for phospholipids under phosphate deprivation, glycoglycerolipid synthases in marine microbes are poorly studied. In the present study, we biochemically characterized a glycolipid glycosyltransferase (GT(cp)) from the marine bacterium “Candidatus Pelagibacter sp.” strain HTCC7211, a member of the SAR11 clade. Our results showed that GT(cp) is able to act as a multifunctional enzyme by synthesizing different glycoglycerolipids with UDP-glucose, UDP-galactose, or UDP-glucuronic acid as sugar donors and diacylglycerol (DAG) as the acceptor. Analyses of enzyme kinetic parameters demonstrated that Mg(2+) notably changes the enzyme’s affinity for UDP-glucose, which improves its catalytic efficiency. Homology modeling and mutational analyses revealed binding sites for the sugar donor and the diacylglycerol lipid acceptor, which provided insights into the retaining mechanism of GT(cp) with its GT-B fold. A phylogenetic analysis showed that GT(cp) and its homologs form a group in the GT4 glycosyltransferase family. These results not only provide new insights into the glycoglycerolipid synthesis mechanism in lipid remodeling but also describe an efficient enzymatic tool for the future synthesis of bioactive molecules. IMPORTANCE The bilayer formed by membrane lipids serves as the containment unit for living microbial cells. In the marine environment, it has been firmly established that phytoplankton and heterotrophic bacteria can replace phospholipids with nonphosphorus sugar-containing glycoglycerolipids in response to phosphorus limitation. However, little is known about how these glycoglycerolipids are synthesized. Here, we determined the biochemical characteristics of a glycolipid glycosyltransferase (GT(cp)) from the marine bacterium “Candidatus Pelagibacter sp.” strain HTCC7211. GT(cp) and its homologs form a group in the GT4 glycosyltransferase family and can synthesize neutral glycolipids (monoglucosyl-1,2-diacyl-sn-glycerol [MGlc-DAG] and monogalactosyl [MGal]-DAG) and monoglucuronic acid diacylglycerol (MGlcA-DAG). We also uncovered the key residues for DAG binding through molecular docking, site-direct mutagenesis, and subsequent enzyme activity assays. Our data provide new insights into the glycoglycerolipid synthesis mechanism in lipid remodeling.