Gene_locus Report for: human-ACOT2

Flavaglines are a class of natural products with potent insecticidal and anticancer activities. beta-Lactones are a privileged structural motif found in both therapeutic agents and chemical probes. Herein, we report the synthesis, unexpected light-driven di-epimerization, and activity-based protein profiling of a novel rocaglate-derived beta-lactone. In addition to in vitro inhibition of the serine hydrolases ABHD10 and ACOT1/2, the most potent beta-lactone enantiomer was also found to inhibit these enzymes, as well as the serine peptidases CTSA and SCPEP1, in PC3 cells.

The maintenance of cellular levels of free fatty acids and acyl-CoAs, the activated form of free fatty acids, is extremely important, as imbalances in lipid metabolism have serious consequences for human health. Acyl-coenzyme A (CoA) thioesterases (ACOTs) hydrolyze acyl-CoAs to the free fatty acid and CoASH, and thereby have the potential to regulate intracellular levels of these compounds. We previously identified and characterized a mouse ACOT gene cluster comprised of six genes that apparently arose by gene duplications encoding acyl-CoA thioesterases with localizations in cytosol (ACOT1), mitochondria (ACOT2), and peroxisomes (ACOT3-6). However, the corresponding human gene cluster contains only three genes (ACOT1, ACOT2, and ACOT4) coding for full-length thioesterase proteins, of which only one is peroxisomal (ACOT4). We therefore set out to characterize the human genes, and we show here that the human ACOT4 protein catalyzes the activities of three mouse peroxisomal ACOTs (ACOT3, 4, and 5), being active on succinyl-CoA and medium to long chain acyl-CoAs, while ACOT1 and ACOT2 carry out similar functions to the corresponding mouse genes. These data strongly suggest that the human ACOT4 gene has acquired the functions of three mouse genes by a functional convergent evolution that also provides an explanation for the unexpectedly low number of human genes.

Flavaglines are a class of natural products with potent insecticidal and anticancer activities. beta-Lactones are a privileged structural motif found in both therapeutic agents and chemical probes. Herein, we report the synthesis, unexpected light-driven di-epimerization, and activity-based protein profiling of a novel rocaglate-derived beta-lactone. In addition to in vitro inhibition of the serine hydrolases ABHD10 and ACOT1/2, the most potent beta-lactone enantiomer was also found to inhibit these enzymes, as well as the serine peptidases CTSA and SCPEP1, in PC3 cells.

Acyl-CoA thioesterases (ACOTs) catalyze the hydrolysis of CoA esters to free CoA and carboxylic acids and have important functions in lipid metabolism and other cellular processes. Type I ACOTs are found only in animals and contain an alpha/beta hydrolase domain, through currently no structural information is available on any of these enzymes. We report here the crystal structure at 2.1A resolution of human mitochondrial ACOT2, a type I enzyme. The structure contains two domains, N and C domains. The C domain has the alpha/beta hydrolase fold, with the catalytic triad Ser294-His422-Asp388. The N domain contains a seven-stranded beta-sandwich, which has some distant structural homologs in other proteins. The active site is located in a large pocket at the interface between the two domains. The structural information has significant relevance for other type I ACOTs and related enzymes.

The maintenance of cellular levels of free fatty acids and acyl-CoAs, the activated form of free fatty acids, is extremely important, as imbalances in lipid metabolism have serious consequences for human health. Acyl-coenzyme A (CoA) thioesterases (ACOTs) hydrolyze acyl-CoAs to the free fatty acid and CoASH, and thereby have the potential to regulate intracellular levels of these compounds. We previously identified and characterized a mouse ACOT gene cluster comprised of six genes that apparently arose by gene duplications encoding acyl-CoA thioesterases with localizations in cytosol (ACOT1), mitochondria (ACOT2), and peroxisomes (ACOT3-6). However, the corresponding human gene cluster contains only three genes (ACOT1, ACOT2, and ACOT4) coding for full-length thioesterase proteins, of which only one is peroxisomal (ACOT4). We therefore set out to characterize the human genes, and we show here that the human ACOT4 protein catalyzes the activities of three mouse peroxisomal ACOTs (ACOT3, 4, and 5), being active on succinyl-CoA and medium to long chain acyl-CoAs, while ACOT1 and ACOT2 carry out similar functions to the corresponding mouse genes. These data strongly suggest that the human ACOT4 gene has acquired the functions of three mouse genes by a functional convergent evolution that also provides an explanation for the unexpectedly low number of human genes.

Using 'oligo-capped' mRNA [Maruyama, K., Sugano, S., 1994. Oligo-capping: a simple method to replace the cap structure of eukaryotic mRNAs with oligoribonucleotides. Gene 138, 171-174], whose cap structure was replaced by a synthetic oligonucleotide, we constructed two types of cDNA library. One is a 'full length-enriched cDNA library' which has a high content of full-length cDNA clones and the other is a '5'-end-enriched cDNA library', which has a high content of cDNA clones with their mRNA start sites. The 5'-end-enriched library was constructed especially for isolating the mRNA start sites of long mRNAs. In order to characterize these libraries, we performed one-pass sequencing of randomly selected cDNA clones from both libraries (84 clones for the full length-enriched cDNA library and 159 clones for the 5'-end-enriched cDNA library). The cDNA clones of the polypeptide chain elongation factor 1 alpha were most frequently (nine clones) isolated, and more than 80% of them (eight clones) contained the mRNA start site of the gene. Furthermore, about 80% of the cDNA clones of both libraries whose sequence matched with known genes had the known 5' ends or sequences upstream of the known 5' ends (28 out of 35 for the full length-enriched library and 51 out of 62 for the 5'-end-enriched library). The longest full-length clone of the full length-enriched cDNA library was about 3300 bp (among 28 clones). In contrast, seven clones (out of the 51 clones with the mRNA start sites) from the 5'-end-enriched cDNA library came from mRNAs whose length is more than 3500 bp. These cDNA libraries may be useful for generating 5' ESTs with the information of the mRNA start sites that are now scarce in the EST database.

We have devised a method to replace the cap structure of a mRNA with an oligoribonucleotide (r-oligo) to label the 5' end of eukaryotic mRNAs. The method consists of removing the cap with tobacco acid pyrophosphatase (TAP) and ligating r-oligos to decapped mRNAs with T4 RNA ligase. This reaction was made cap-specific by removing 5'-phosphates of non-capped RNAs with alkaline phosphatase prior to TAP treatment. Unlike the conventional methods that label the 5' end of cDNAs, this method specifically labels the capped end of the mRNAs with a synthetic r-oligo prior to first-strand cDNA synthesis. The 5' end of the mRNA was identified quite simply by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR).