O-fucosylation of notch occurs in the endoplasmic reticulum

LADII (leukocyte adhesion deficiency type II)/CDGIIc (congenital disorder of glycosylation type IIc) is a rare autosomal recessive disease characterized by leukocyte adhesion deficiency as well as severe neurological and developmental abnormalities. It is caused by mutations in the Golgi GDP-fucose transporter, resulting in a reduction of fucosylated antigens on the cell surface. A recent study using fibroblasts from LADII/CDGIIc patients suggested that although terminal fucosylation of N-glycans is reduced severely, protein O-fucosylation is generally unaffected (Sturla, L., Rampal, R., Haltiwanger, R. S., Fruscione, F., Etzioni, A., and Tonetti, M. (2003) J. Biol. Chem. 278, 26727-26733). A potential explanation for this phenomenon is that enzymes adding O-fucose to proteins localize to cell organelles other than the Golgi apparatus. In this study, we investigated the subcellular localization of protein O-fucosyltransferase 1 (O-FucT-1), which is responsible for adding O-fucose to epidermal growth factor-like repeats. Our analysis reveals that, unlike all other known fucosyltransferases, O-FucT-1 is a soluble protein that localizes to the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). In addition, it appears that O-FucT-1 is retained in the ER by a KDEL-like sequence at its C terminus. Our results also suggest that enzymatic addition of O-fucose to proteins occurs in the ER, suggesting that a novel, ER-localized GDP-fucose transporter may exist. The fact that O-FucT-1 recognizes properly folded epidermal growth factor-like repeats, together with this unique localization, suggests that it may play a role in quality control.