Swainsonine causes the production of hybrid glycoproteins by human skin fibroblasts and rat liver Golgi preparations.

The synthesis of glycoproteins containing N-linked complex oligosaccharides is blocked by swainsonine at the step catalyzed by Golgi mannosidase II (Tulsiani, D. R. P., Harris, T. M., and Touster, O. (1982) J. Biol Chem. 257, 7936-7939). Accordingly, hybrid glycoproteins might be produced in the presence of swainsonine. In this report, we demonstrate that swainsonine causes human skin fibroblasts to synthesize such glycoproteins. In control fibroblasts, there were approximately equal amounts of complex and high mannose glycoproteins. In the presence of swainsonine (10 micrograms/ml), most of the complex glycoproteins were replaced by hybrid types. The principal oligosaccharide had the following structure: (formula; see text) A smaller amount of the asialo hybrid was also produced. The structure of the hybrid was established by Bio-Gel P-4 fractionation of oligosaccharides produced by endoglycosidase H treatment of pronase-derived glycopeptides, followed by examination of the susceptibility of the oligosaccharide to glycohydrolases and by its adsorbability to serotonin-Sepharose 4B. The same hybrid oligosaccharide was produced efficiently by rat liver Golgi membranes in the presence of ([3H] Man)5GlcNAc, UDP-GlcNAc, UDP-Gal, CMP-NeuAc, and swainsonine. Golgi mannosidase II had no action on the hybrid oligosaccharide, and little action on asialo hybrid, but both were converted to the mannosidase II substrate, GlcNAcMan5GlcNAc, by appropriate treatment with neuraminidase and beta-galactosidase. Jack bean alpha-D-mannosidase gave the expected yields of free mannose from the various oligosaccharides studied in this work. Swainsonine should be useful in investigating the role of oligosaccharide structure of glycoproteins because of its ability to alter the oligosaccharide.