The putative tumour suppressor Fus-2 is an N-acetyltransferase

Acetyltransferases are essential enzymes for a wide variety of cellular pro cesses and mutations in acetyltransferase genes have been associated with t he development of certain cancers. For this reason, we conducted a computer ized sequence homology search for novel acetyltransferases. Here, we show t hat the putative tumour suppressor protein Fus-2 has homology to the cataly tic domain of acetyltransferases. We demonstrate that Fus-2 can acetylate t he N-terminus of proteins using a ping-pong mechanism and that it has a spe cificity for substrates. Consistent with other N-acetyltransferases, Fus-2 localizes to the cytoplasm, as shown by GFP-tag experiments, Since the Fus- 2 gene maps to the chromosomal region 3p21.3, which contains at least one t umour suppressor gene, the N-acetyltransferase functions of Fus-2 may be re levant to its potential role in cancer.