Désacétylation essais pour démêler les Interplay entre sirtuines (SIRT2) et protéines substrats spécifiques

Post-translational modifications (PTMs) regulate cell signaling networks allowing cells to rapidly respond to internal and external signals. Over the last few decades, many different PTMs playing a pivotal role in diverse processes have been identified but only a few have been studied extensively, such as phosphorylation, acetylation and ubiquitination ^1-3. Focusing on acetylation, Allfrey et al. were the first to propose a role for histone acetylation in regulating gene transcription about 50 years ago ⁴. Research in this field has revealed that histone lysine acetylation modulates chromatin condensation and it is considered to be an epigenetic mark as part of the histone code ⁵. Although it took a long time until the discovery of tubulin as the first non-histone acetylation target ⁶, it is well established now that hundreds of eukaryotic proteins beyond histones can be acetylated and lysine acetylation has been recognized as a wide-spread PTM that may rival phosphorylation and ubiquitination in its prevalence ^7-9. Interestingly, non-histone acetylated proteins can be signaling molecules in the cytoplasm, transcription factors in the nucleus, and metabolic enzymes in mitochondria, highlighting the significance of acetylation in regulating a plethora of cellular processes.

The acetylation status of a protein depends on the coordinated and opposing function of lysine acetyltransferases (KATs) and lysine deacetylases (KDACs) which add and remove acetyl groups from proteins. The reversible acetylation of lysine, which involves neutralization of a positive charge ¹⁰, alters protein structure and it seems very likely to also alter enzymatic function in several cases ^11-13. Focusing on KDACs, 18 proteins have been identified in the human and mouse genomes ^14-16. Among them, mammalian sirtuins (also called class III histone lysine deacetylases) which are distinct from other members as they require NAD⁺ for their enzymatic function, have attracted extensive interest in this research field ¹⁶. In mammals, seven sirtuins (SIRT1-7) have been identified, each of them sharing a conserved 275-amino-acid catalytic core domain, which are mainly categorized according to their subcellular localization to the nucleus (SIRT1, 6, and 7), mitochondria (SIRT3, 4, and 5), or cytoplasm (SIRT2). SIRT1-3 have a robust deacetylation activity, while SIRT4 is reported to display ADP-ribosyltransferase activity, SIRT5 may function as a protein desuccinylase and demalonylase, and SIRT6 and SIRT7 display weak deacetylase activity but are involved in other types of acylations ¹⁷. In accordance with the significance of acetylation as a regulatory PTM modification involved in several cellular functions, sirtuins have also been implicated in a wide range of processes. After the first breakthrough studies establishing the role of sirtuins in life span extension, it has been shown that they are involved in diverse cellular functions including DNA repair, maintenance of genomic instability, apoptosis, response to stress and inflammation, control of energy efficiency, circadian clocks and metabolism, as well as contributing to the initiation and/or progression of age-related diseases such as cancer, neurodegeneration and type 2 diabetes ^15,16.

Despite the significant progress in the field of sirtuin biology, more work remains to unravel undiscovered roles and functions through the identification of novel substrates. This is evidenced more emphatically by recent advances in high-resolution mass spectrometry (MS) based proteomics which have significantly increased the number of proteins found to be acetylated but most importantly have identified several different acetylated lysines in each protein, arguing that acetylation may be as wide-spread as other PTMs such as phosphorylation ^7,8,17. Taking into consideration that specific deacetylases have not yet been identified for most of these acetylated proteins-substrates, it is reasonable to suggest that both in vitro and in vivo deacetylation assays are needed to confirm and establish an acetylated protein as a legitimate substrate of a specific deacetylase. In the experimental protocols described below, details will be given on how to perform both in vitro and in vivo deacetylation assays using SIRT2 as the specific deacetylase.