An in vitro gut-immune co-culture model with apical and basal accessibility, designed to more closely resemble a human intestinal microenvironment, was employed to study the role of the N-linked protein glycosylation pathway in Campylobacter jejuni pathogenicity. The gut-immune co-culture (GIC) was developed to model important aspects of the human small intestine by the inclusion of mucin-producing goblet cells, human enterocytes and dendritic cells, bringing together a mucus-containing epithelial monolayer with elements of the innate immune system. The utility of the system was demonstrated by characterizing host–pathogen interactions facilitated by N-linked glycosylation, such as host epithelial barrier functions, bacterial invasion and immunogenicity. Changes in human intestinal barrier functions in the presence of 11168 C. jejuni (wildtype) strains were quantified using GICs. The glycosylation-impaired strain 11168 ΔpglE was 100-fold less capable of adhering to and invading this intestinal model in cell infectivity assays. Quantification of inflammatory signaling revealed that 11168ΔpglE differentially modulated inflammatory responses in different intestinal microenvironments, suppressive in some but activating in others. Virulence-associated outer membrane vesicles produced by wildtype and 11168ΔpglE C. jejuni were shown to have differential composition and function, with both leading to immune system activation when provided to the gut-immune co-culture model. This analysis of aspects of C. jejuni infectivity in the presence and absence of its N-linked glycome is enabled by application of the gut-immune model, and we anticipate that this system will be applicable to further studies of C. jejuni and other enteropathogens of interest.

Herein we report the synthesis of N-acetyl neuraminic acid derivatives as 4-methylumbelliferyl glycosides and their use in fluorometrically quantifying human and bacterial sialidase activity and substrate specificities. We found that sialidases in the human promyelocytic leukemic cell line HL60 were able to cleave sialic acid substrates with fluorinated C-5 modifications, in some cases to a greater degree than the natural N-acetyl functionality. Human sialidases isoforms were also able to cleave unnatural substrates with bulky and hydrophobic C-5 modifications. In contrast, we found bacterial sialidase isolated from C. perfringens to be less tolerant of sialic acid derivatization at this position, with virtually no cleavage of these glycosides observed. From our results, we conclude that human sialidase activity is a significant factor in sialic acid metabolic glycoengineering efforts utilizing unnatural sialic acid derivatives. Our fluorogenic probes have enabled further understanding of the activities and substrate specificities of human sialidases in a cellular context.

This method describes the chemoenzymatic synthesis of several nucleotide sugars, which are essential substrates in the biosynthesis of prokaryotic N- and O-linked glycoproteins. Protein glycosylation is now known to be widespread in prokaryotes and proceeds via sequential action of several enzymes, utilizing both common and modified prokaryote-specific sugar nucleotides. The latter, which include UDP-hexoses such as UDP-diNAc-bacillosamine (UDP-diNAcBac), UDP-diNAcAlt, and UDP-2,3-diNAcManA, are also important components of other bacterial and archaeal glycoconjugates. The ready availability of these "high-value" intermediates will enable courses of study into inhibitor screening, glycoconjugate biosynthesis pathway discovery, and unnatural carbohydrate incorporation toward metabolic engineering.

The human enteropathogen Campylobacter jejuni, like many bacteria, employs siderophores such as enterobactin for cellular uptake of ferric iron. This transport process has been shown to be essential for virulence and presents an attractive opportunity for further study of the permissiveness of this pathway to small-molecule intervention and as inspiration for the development of synthetic carriers that may effectively transport cargo into Gram-negative bacteria. In this work, we have developed a facile and robust microscale assay to measure growth recovery of C. jejuni NCTC 11168 in liquid culture as a result of ferric iron uptake. In parallel, we have established the solid-phase synthesis of catecholamide compounds modeled on enterobactin fragments. Applying these methodological developments, we show that small synthetic iron chelators of minimal dimensions provide ferric iron to C. jejuni with equal or greater efficiency than enterobactin.

Human sialidases (NEUs) catalyze the removal of N-acetyl neuraminic acids from the glycome of the cell and regulate a diverse repertoire of nominal cellular functions, such as cell signaling and adhesion. A greater understanding of their substrate permissivity is of interest in order to discern their physiological functions in disease states and in the design of specific and effective small molecule inhibitors. Towards this, we have synthesized soluble fluorogenic reporters of mammalian sialidase activity bearing unnatural sialic acids commonly incorporated into the cellular glycocalyx via metabolic glycoengineering. We found cell-surface sialidases in Jurkat capable of cleaving unnatural sialic acids with differential activities toward a variety of R groups on neuraminic acid. In addition, we observed modulated structure-activity relationships when cell-surface sialidases were presented glycans with unnatural bulky, hydrophobic or fluorinated moieties incorporated directly via glycoengineering. Our results confirm the importance of cell-surface sialidases in glycoengineering incorporation data. We demonstrate the flexibility of human NEUs toward derivatized sugars and highlight the importance of native glycan presentation to sialidase binding and activity. These results stand to inform not only metabolic glycoengineering efforts but also inhibitor design.