We are pleased to inform that Dr. Karolina Skorupińska-Tudek and Prof. Ewa Świeżewska are co-authors of an article published in prestigious Nature. In this paper the structure of WaaL from Cupriavidus metallidurans in complex with its product – undecaprenyl diphosphate is presented.

WaaL is a glycosyltransferase carrying out the addition of the O-antigen to the lipid A core oligosaccharide. The newly presented structure of CmWaaL provides an essential framework for understanding how O-antigen ligases perform the final, critical, step in lipopolysaccharide (LPS) maturation across a variety of pathogenic Gram-negative organisms and offers a structural basis for designing inhibitors of this essential process in bacterial cell envelope biosynthesis. This research open new possibilities for designing of antibacterial drugs.

This study has been performed as a result of the joint effort of researchers from Columbia University, the University of Warwick, the University of Chicago, the University of Georgia, the New Jersey Medical School, the New York Structural Biology Center and the Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics PAS.

Ashraf KU, Nygaard R, Vickery ON, Erramilli SK, Herrera CM, McConville TH, Petrou VI, Giacometti SI, Dufrisne MB, Nosol K, Zinkle AP, Graham CLB, Loukeris M, Kloss B, Skorupinska-Tudek K, Swiezewska E, Roper DI, Clarke OB, Uhlemann AC, Kossiakoff AA, Trent MS, Stansfeld PJ, Mancia F. Structural basis of lipopolysaccharide maturation by the O-antigen ligase. Nature 604, 371–376 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04555-x