Expression, purification and preliminary crystallographic analysis of N-acetylglucosamine-1-phosphate uridylyltransferase from Mycobacterium tuberculosis

N-Acetylglucosamine 1-phosphate uridyltransferase (GlmU) from M. tuberculosis H37Rv has been crystallized and preliminary X-ray crystallographic analysis has been performed. GlmU is a bi-domained bifunctional enzyme that is involved in the biosynthesis of UDP-N-acetylglucosamine, a precursor in peptidoglycan biosynthesis in M. tuberculosis. The gene product of open reading frame Rv1018c from Mycobacterium tuberculosis is annotated as encoding a probable N-acetylglucosamine 1-phosphate uridylyltransferase (MtbGlmU), an enzyme that catalyzes the biosynthesis of UDP-N-acetylglucosamine, a precursor common to lipopolysaccharide and peptidoglycan biosynthesis. Following overexpression in Escherichia coli, the enzyme was purified and crystallized using the hanging-drop vapour-diffusion method. Native diffraction data were collected from crystals belonging to space group R32 and processed to a resolution of 2.2 Å