SIRT2 and lysine fatty acylation regulate the transforming activity of K-Ras4a
Abstract
Ras proteins play vital roles in numerous biological processes and Ras mutations are found in many human tumors. Understanding how Ras proteins are regulated is important for elucidating cell signaling pathways and identifying new targets for treating human diseases. Here we report that one of the K-Ras splice variants, K-Ras4a, is subject to lysine fatty acylation, a previously under-studied protein post-translational modification. Sirtuin 2 (SIRT2), one of the mammalian nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD)-dependent lysine deacylases, catalyzes the removal of fatty acylation from K-Ras4a. We further demonstrate that SIRT2-mediated lysine defatty-acylation promotes endomembrane localization of K-Ras4a, enhances its interaction with A-Raf, and thus promotes cellular transformation. Our study identifies lysine fatty acylation as a previously unknown regulatory mechanism for the Ras family of GTPases that is distinct from cysteine fatty acylation. These findings highlight the biological significance of lysine fatty acylation and sirtuin-catalyzed protein lysine defatty-acylation.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Institutes of Health (1R01GM121540-01A1)
- Maurine E Linder
- Hening Lin
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
- Hui Jing
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Cynthia Wolberger, Johns Hopkins University, United States
Version history
- Received: October 2, 2017
- Accepted: December 13, 2017
- Accepted Manuscript published: December 14, 2017 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: December 27, 2017 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2017, Jing et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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