Investigating Deformylase and Deacylase Activity of Mammalian and Bacterial Sirtuins

Abstract

Lysine acylation constitutes a major group of post-translational modifications of proteins, and is found in the proteomes of organisms from all kingdoms of life. Sirtuins are considered the main erasers of these modification marks, and thus contribute to acylation-dependent regulation of enzyme activity, and potentially of protein quality control. We have established a substrate scaffold to enable the analysis of sirtuin activity with a broad range of acyl-lysine modifications, including hydrophobic fatty acids. Characterization of the deacylase activity of the bacterial SrtN, which is encoded by the yhdZ gene of Bacillus subtilis, showed that this enzyme is capable of removing a broad range of acyl groups. These investigations further showed that SrtN and human SIRT1 are efficient lysine-deformylases, thereby providing a first clue as to how this nonenzymatic modification might be removed from affected proteins.

Keywords: deacetylation assay; enzyme catalysis; lysine acylation; lysine formylation; protein modifications; sirtuin.