Deconstruction of protein O-glycosylation

GalNAc-transferase (GalNAc-T) isoforms modify distinct subsets of the O-glycoproteome and GalNAc-type O-glycosylation is found on most proteins trafficking through the secretory pathway in metazoan cells. The O-glycoproteome is regulated by up to 20 polypeptide GalNAc-Ts and the contributions and biological functions of individual GalNAc-Ts are poorly understood. Here, we used a zinc-finger nuclease (ZFN)-directed knockout strategy to probe the contributions of the major GalNAc-Ts (GalNAc-T1 and T2) in liver cells, and explore how the GalNAc-T repertoire quantitatively affects the O-glycoproteome. We demonstrate that the majority of the O-glycoproteome is covered by redundancy, whereas distinct subsets of substrates are modified by non-redundant functions of GalNAc-T1 and T2. Differential transcriptomic analysis indicates that loss of function of a GalNAc-T induces specific transcriptional response. The non-redundant O-glycoproteome subsets for and the transcriptional responses for each isoform appeared to be related to different cellular processes, and for the GalNAc-T2 isoform supporting a role in lipid metabolism. The results demonstrate that GalNAc-Ts have non-redundant glycosylation functions, and that these may affect distinct cellular processes. The data provides a comprehensive resource for unique substrates for individual GalNAc-Ts. Our study provides a new view on the regulation of the O-glycoproteome, suggesting that the plurality of GalNAc-Ts arose to regulate distinct protein functions and cellular processes.