Researchers at EMBL Heidelberg have made a groundbreaking discovery that gut bacteria play a crucial role in modifying proteins in the brain, according to a recent study published in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology. The novel technique, called DQGlyco, enables scientists to analyze glycosylation patterns with unprecedented precision and scale.
Glycosylation is a process where carbohydrates modify proteins, altering their functions. This phenomenon affects how cells attach to each other, move, communicate, and even influence diseases such as cancer and neuronal disorders. However, studying glycosylation has been notoriously difficult due to the limited number of glycosylated proteins in samples and the laborious process of enriching them.
The new method, DQGlyco, uses functionalized silica beads to selectively enrich glycosylated proteins from biological samples, allowing for precise identification and measurement. Applying this technique to brain tissue samples from mice, researchers identified over 150,000 glycosylated protein forms, an increase of over 25-fold compared to previous studies.
This breakthrough also revealed the presence of microheterogeneity, where a single part of a protein can be modified by multiple sugar groups. The team found this phenomenon in hundreds of protein sites and across various species, including humans.
To address an outstanding biological question, researchers tested whether gut microbiomes influence brain glycosylation signatures. They found that mice with different gut bacteria had distinct glycosylation patterns in the brain compared to ‘germ-free’ mice. The changes were particularly apparent in proteins associated with neural functions such as cognitive processing and axon growth.
The study’s datasets are openly available for other researchers, and the team is exploring the potential of using machine learning approaches to predict glycosylation sites in different species. This could aid in understanding glycosylation’s functional role in cells and answering fundamental biological questions.
Source: https://scitechdaily.com/gut-bacteria-secretly-rewires-the-brain-new-study-reveals-how