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. 2018 Jul;75(7):318-322.
doi: 10.1002/cm.21455. Epub 2018 Aug 26.

Actin's N-terminal acetyltransferase uncovered

Thomas Arnesen  1   2   3 , Ronen Marmorstein  4 , Roberto Dominguez  5
Affiliations

Actin's N-terminal acetyltransferase uncovered

Thomas Arnesen et al. Cytoskeleton (Hoboken). 2018 Jul.

Abstract

Humans express six highly conserved actin isoforms, which differ the most at their N-termini. Actin's N-terminus undergoes co- and post-translational processing unique among eukaryotic proteins. During translation, the initiator methionine of the two cytoplasmic isoforms is N-terminally acetylated (Nt-acetylated) and that of the four muscle isoforms is removed and the exposed cysteine is Nt-acetylated. Then, an unidentified acetylaminopeptidase post-translationally removes the Ac-Met (or Ac-Cys), and all six isoforms are re-acetylated at the N-terminus. Despite the vital importance of actin for cellular processes ranging from cell motility to organelle trafficking and cell division, the mechanism and functional consequences of Nt-acetylation remained unresolved. Two recent studies significantly advance our understanding of actin Nt-acetylation. Drazic et al. (2018, Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 115, 4399-4404) identify actin's dedicated N-terminal acetyltransferase (NAA80/NatH), and demonstrate that Nt-acetylation critically impacts actin assembly in vitro and in cells. NAA80 knockout cells display increased filopodia and lamellipodia formation and accelerated cell motility. In vitro, the absence of Nt-acetylation leads to a decrease in the rates of filament depolymerization and elongation, including formin-induced elongation. Goris et al. (2018, Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 115, 4405-4410] describe the structure of Drosophila NAA80 in complex with a peptide-CoA bi-substrate analog mimicking the N-terminus of β-actin. The structure reveals the source of NAA80's specificity for actin's negatively-charged N-terminus. Nt-acetylation neutralizes a positive charge, thus enhancing the overall negative charge of actin's unique N-terminus. Actin's N-terminus is exposed in the filament and influences the interactions of many actin-binding proteins. These advances open the way to understanding the many likely consequences and functional roles of actin Nt-acetylation.

Keywords: N-terminal acetylation; actin assembly; cell motility.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare not having any conflict of interest to declare

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Nt-acetylation of actin isoforms
(a) Humans express six actin isoforms, sharing 94–99% sequence identity. Most of the differences among isoforms concentrate near the N-terminus, which is additionally acetylated in all the isoforms. Dark blue to white background coloring indicates amino acids conservation scores of 100%, 67%, 50% and <50%. The UniProt accession codes are (in the order of the alignment): P60709, P63261, P68133, P68032, P62736, P63267. (b) The acetylation of actin’s N-terminus proceeds through a multi-step process, unique among all eukaryotic proteins, which involved both co- and post-translational modification. Muscle (class II) actins contain Met-Cys at the N-terminus after synthesis, and the initial step of co-translational acetylation (likely catalyzed by NatA) is preceded by the removal of the initiator methionine. Cytoplasmic (class I) actins are co-translationally Nt-acetylated directly on the initiator methionine, a reaction catalyzed by NatB (Van Damme et al. 2012; Arnesen et al. 2009; Polevoda and Sherman 2003). A still non-identified acetylaminopeptidase removes the acetylated N-terminal residues, which is followed by the last step of post-translational Nt-acetylation catalyzed by NatH (NAA80) (Goris et al. 2018; Drazic et al. 2018) (c) Actin’s N-terminus is prominently exposed in the actin filament, such that most F-actin-binding protein likely “see” the difference between acetylated and non-acetylated actin, as well as differences among actin isoforms. Actin subunits along the short-pitch helix of the actin filament are named A1–5 (from the filament pointed to barbed ends). Of particular interest is myosin, which binds in a cleft between two actin subunits along the long-pitch helix of the actin filament, within contact distance to the N-termini of both actin subunits. The figure shows the recently determined cryo-EM structure of ADP-myosin-IB bound to the actin filament (Mentes et al. 2018).
Figure 2
Figure 2. Source of NAA80’s specificity for actin
(a) Alignment of the sequences of Drosophila and human NAA80 (UniProt accession codes Q59DX8 and Q93015-2, respectively). The two proteins share only ~29% sequence identity (blue background color indicates identical amino acids). Different from Drosophila NAA80, the human protein has a long extension at the N-terminus and a large, proline-rich insertion near the C-terminus. The N-terminal extension is unique to mammalian NAA80, and precedes the catalytic core that is most highly conserved among all NATs. The N-terminal extension could possible recruit still to be identified auxiliary subunits that might regulate NAA80’s activity in cells. The proline-rich insertion contains a classical profilin-binding site, as observed in many cytoskeletal proteins (Dominguez 2016). (b) Electrostatic surface representation of the structure of Drosophila NAA80 in complex with an actin peptide-CoA bi-substrate analog, mimicking the N-terminus of β-actin (Goris et al. 2018). The positively-charged substrate-binding groove makes direct and water-mediated contacts with the side chains of Asp-3 and Asp-4 of β-actin and appears uniquely adapted for binding actin’s negatively-charged N-terminus, which is unique among all eukaryotic proteins.
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