A truncated form of human alpha 1-acid glycoprotein is useful as a molecular tool for insect glycobiology

N-glycosylation is an important posttranslational modification that results in a variety of biological activities, structural stability, and protein-protein interactions. There are still many mysteries in the structure and function of N-glycans, and detailed elucidation is necessary. Baculovirus expression system (BES) is widely used to produce recombinant glycoproteins, but it is not suitable for clinical use due to differences in N-glycan structure between insects and mammals. It is necessary to develop adequate model glycoproteins for analysis to efficiently alter the insect-type N-glycosylation pathway to human type. The previous research shows the recombinant alpha 1-acid glycoprotein (${\alpha}1AGP$) secreted from silkworm cultured cells or larvae is highly glycosylated and expected to be an excellent research candidate for the glycoprotein analysis expressed by BES. Therefore, we improved the ${\alpha}1AGP$ to be a better model for studying glycosylation. The modified ${\alpha}1AGP$ (${\alpha}1AGP{\Delta}$) recombinant protein was successfully expressed and purified by using BES, however, the expression level in silkworm cultured cells and larvae were lower than that of the ${\alpha}1AGP$. Subsequently, we confirmed the detailed profile of N-glycan on the ${\alpha}1AGP{\Delta}$ by LS/MS analysis the N-glycan structure at each glycosylation site. These results indicated that the recombinant ${\alpha}1AGP{\Delta}$ could be usable as a better model glycoprotein of N-glycosylation research in BES.