Comprehensive profiling of protein lysine acetylation and its overlap with lysine succinylation in the Porphyromonas gingivalis fimbriated strain ATCC 33277

Abstract

Porphyromonas gingivalis is a pathogen closely associated with periodontal and systemic infections. Recently, lysine acetylation (Kac) and lysine succinylation (Ksuc) have been identified in bacterial proteins with diverse biological and pathological functions. The Ksuc of P. gingivalis ATCC 33277 has been characterized in our previous work, and here, we report the systematic analysis of Kac and its crosstalk with Ksuc in this bacterium. A combination of the affinity enrichment by the acetyl-lysine antibody with highly sensitive LC-MS/MS was used to identify the lysine-acetylated proteins and sites in P. gingivalis ATCC 33277. A total of 1,112 lysine-acetylated sites matching 438 proteins were identified. These proteins involved in several cellular processes, especially those proteins related to protein biosynthesis and central metabolism had a high tendency to be lysine acetylated. Moreover, lysine sites flanked by tyrosine, phenylalanine, and histidine in the +1 position, as well as residue lysine in position +4 to +5, were the targets of Kac. Additionally, proteins involved in adhesins, gingipains, black pigmentation, and oxidative stress resistance were identified as substrates of Kac. Collectively, these results suggest Kac may play a critical role in the regulation of physiology and virulence of P. gingivalis. Furthermore, we discovered that, Ksuc and Kac were extensively overlapped in P. gingivalis ATCC 33277, especially in proteins related to ribosomes and metabolism. This study provides a significant beginning for further investigating the role of Kac and Ksuc in the pathogenicity of P. gingivalis.

Keywords: Porphyromonas gingivalis; lysine acetylation; lysine succinylation; oxidative stress resistance; virulence factor.