Plant Family 1 glycosyltransferases (GTs) recognize a wide range of natural and non-natural scaffolds and have considerable potential as biocatalysts for the synthesis of small molecule glycosides. Regiospecificity of glycosylation is an important property, given that many acceptors have multiple potential glycosylation sites. This study has used a domain-swapping approach to explore the determinants of regiospecific glycosylation of two GTs of Arabidopsis thaliana, UGT74F1 and UGT74F2. The flavonoid quercetin was used as a model acceptor, providing five potential sites for O-glycosylation by the two GTs. As is commonly found for many plant GTs, both of these enzymes produce distinct multiple glycosides of quercetin. A high performance liquid chromatography method has been established to perform detailed steady-state kinetic analyses of these concurrent reactions. These data show the influence of each parameter in determining a GT product formation profile toward quercetin. Interestingly, construction and kinetic analyses of a series of UGT74F1/F2 chimeras have revealed that mutating a single amino acid distal to the active site, Asn-142, can lead to the development of a new GT with a more constrained regiospecificity. This ability to form the 4-O-glucoside of quercetin is transferable to other flavonoid scaffolds and provides a basis for preparative scale production of flavonoid 4-O-glucosides through the use of wholecell biocatalysis.The glycosylation of small hydrophobic molecules is known to alter their chemical and biological characteristics. The alterations include changes in water solubility, stability, pharmacokinetic properties, and bioactivity (1, 2). Enzymes that catalyze these reactions are Family 1 glycosyltransferases (GTs), 3 with representatives found in a wide range of prokaryotic and eukaryotic organisms.Extensive study of GT activities has demonstrated that the enzymes display an exquisite regio-(3), enantio-(4), and chemospecificity (5) toward the acceptor molecule. However, as yet the determinants of this specificity are poorly understood. This lack of understanding presents challenges to the interpretation of substrate activity data (6, 7), GT rational redesign (8, 9), and activity prediction (10, 11). Future progress in predicting GT sequence-structure-activity relationships will depend on a greater number of studies that characterize the key determinants of activity and specificity.Quercetin is the most abundant flavonoid in the human diet (12) and has frequently been used as a model substrate for GT activity (13-15). Quercetin aglycone is found only at low concentrations in the primary dietary source, plants, where glycosylated forms predominate (16). In addition, in mammals, glycosides are the major byproducts of quercetin phase II metabolism (17). Many studies have shown that glycosylation of quercetin significantly affects bioavailability and efficacy with respect to anti-oxidant, anti-proliferative, and anti-cancer properties (18). There are also some data to indicate that the positi...