Central Role of Pyruvate Kinase in Carbon Co-catabolism of Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) displays a high degree of metabolic plasticity to adapt to challenging host environments. Genetic evidence suggests thatMtbrelies mainly on fatty acid catabolism in the host. However,Mtbalso maintains a functional glycolytic pathway and its role in the cellular metabolism ofMtbhas yet to be understood.

Acetylation of acetyl-CoA synthetase from Mycobacterium tuberculosis leads to specific inactivation of the adenylation reaction.

Acetyl-CoA synthetase (ACS) catalyzes the formation of AcCoA from acetate, ATP and Coenzyme A, allowing the organism to grow on acetate as the sole carbon source. ACS was the first enzyme in Mycobacterium tuberculosis shown to be regulated by posttranslational acetylation by the cAMP-dependent protein acetyltransferase. This modification results in the inactivation of the enzyme and can be reversed in the presence of NAD(+) and a mycobacterial sirtuin-like deacetylase.

HUWE1 ubiquitinates MyoD and targets it for proteasomal degradation.

MyoD is a tissue-specific transcriptional activator that acts as a master switch for muscle development. It activates a broad array of muscle-specific genes, which leads to conversion of proliferating myoblasts into mature myotubes. The ubiquitin proteasome system (UPS) plays an important role in controlling MyoD.

Blm10 protein promotes proteasomal substrate turnover by an active gating mechanism.

For optimal proteolytic function, the central core of the proteasome (core particle (CP) or 20S) has to associate with activators. We investigated the impact of the yeast activator Blm10 on proteasomal peptide and protein degradation. We found enhanced degradation of peptide substrates in the presence of Blm10 and demonstrated that Blm10 has the capacity to accelerate proteasomal turnover of the unstructured protein tau-441 in vitro.

Regulation of the polycomb protein Ring1B by self-ubiquitination or by E6-AP may have implications to the pathogenesis of Angelman syndrome.

The polycomb repressive complex (PRC) 1 protein Ring1B is an ubiquitin ligase that modifies nucleosomal histone H2A, a modification which plays a critical role in regulation of gene expression. We have shown that self-ubiquitination of Ring1B generates multiply branched, "noncanonical" polyubiquitin chains that do not target the ligase for degradation, but rather stimulate its activity toward histone H2A. This finding implies that Ring1B is targeted by a heterologous E3.