Arabidopsis thaliana glucuronosyltransferase in family GT14

Arabinogalactan proteins are abundant cell-surface proteoglycans in plants and are involved in many cellular processes including somatic embryogenesis, cell-cell interactions, and cell elongation. We reported a glucuronosyltransferase encoded by Arabidopsis AtGlcAT14A, which catalyzes an addition of glucuronic acid residues to β-1,3- and β-1,6-linked galactans of arabinogalactan (Knoch et al. 2013). The knockout mutant of this gene resulted in the enhanced growth rate of hypocotyls and roots of seedlings, suggesting an involvement of AtGlcAT14A in cell elongation. AtGlcAt14A belongs to the family GT14 in the Carbohydrate Active Enzyme database (CAZy; www.cazy.org), in which a total of 11 proteins, including AtGLCAT14A, are classified from Arabidopsis thaliana. In this paper, we report the enzyme activities for the rest of the Arabidopsis GT14 isoforms, analyzed in the same way as for AtGlcAT14A. Evidently, two other Arabidopsis GT14 isoforms, At5g15050 and At2g37585, also possess the glucuronosyltransferase activity adding glucuronic acid residues to β-1,3- and β-1,6-linked galactans. Therefore, we named At5g15050 and At2g37585 as AtGlcAT14B and AtGlcAT14C, respectively.