Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2009 Aug;84(1):99-104.
doi: 10.1007/s00253-009-1994-8. Epub 2009 Apr 8.

RimJ is responsible for N(alpha)-acetylation of thymosin alpha1 in Escherichia coli

Hongqing Fang  1 , Xu Zhang, Lin Shen, Xinxi Si, Yuantao Ren, Hongmei Dai, Shulong Li, Changlin Zhou, Huipeng Chen
Affiliations

RimJ is responsible for N(alpha)-acetylation of thymosin alpha1 in Escherichia coli

Hongqing Fang et al. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol. 2009 Aug.

Abstract

N(alpha)-Acetylation is one of the most common protein modifications in eukaryotes but a rare event in prokaryotes. Some endogenously N(alpha)-acetylated proteins in eukaryotes are frequently reported not to be acetylated or only very partially when expressed in recombinant Escherichia coli. Thymosin alpha1 (Talpha1), an N(alpha)-acetylated peptide of 28 amino acids, displays a powerful general immunostimulating activity. Here, we revealed that a fusion protein of thymosin alpha1 and L12 is partly N(alpha)-acetylated in E. coli. Through deletion of some N(alpha)-acetyltransferases by Red recombination, we found that, when rimJ is disrupted, the fusion protein is completely unacetylated. The relationship of rimJ and N(alpha)-acetylation of Talpha1 was further investigated by gene rescue and in vitro modification. Our results demonstrate that N(alpha)-acetylation of recombinant Talpha1-fused protein in E. coli is catalyzed by RimJ and that fully acetylated Talpha1 can be obtained by co-expressing with RimJ. This is the first description that an ectopic protein acetylation in bacterial expression systems is catalyzed by RimJ, a known prokaryotic N(alpha)-acetyltransferase.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

Publication types

MeSH terms

LinkOut - more resources