Ys. Morita et Pt. Englund, Fatty acid remodeling of glycosyl phosphatidylinositol anchors in Trypanosoma brucei: incorporation of fatty acids other than myristate, MOL BIOCH P, 115(2), 2001, pp. 157-164
Trypanosoma brucei is the protozoan parasite that causes African sleeping s
ickness. Its surface is packed with 10(7) copies of the glycosyl phosphatid
ylinositol (GPI)-anchored variant surface glycoprotein (VSG). This GPI anch
or is unusual in that it contains two myristates (14:0) in its lipid moiety
. This fatty acid specificity is achieved through myristoylation of the GPI
precursor, and the acyltransferases involved in the GPI remodeling were pr
esumed to be specific for myristate. However, their specificity had never b
een fully evaluated. Here we found as expected that the remodeling acyltran
sferases completely excluded palmitate (16:0) and stearate (18:0) in a cell
-free fatty acid remodeling system. In contrast, we found surprisingly that
one of these enzymes was permissive to shorter Fatty acids such as laurate
(12:0) and octanoate (8:0). However, the rates of incorporation of shorter
fatty acids were lower than that of myristate at low substrate concentrati
on. Since shorter fatty acids are virtually absent in the parasite and in t
he host bloodstream, it is unlikely that shorter fatty acids compete effect
ively with myristate as remodeling substrates under physiological condition
s. Even if they were present in small quantities, a recently identified spe
cialized Fatty acid synthetase efficiently elongates shorter fatty acids to
myristate prior to incorporation into GPIs (Morita et al., Science 288 (20
00) 140-3.). Therefore, even though a remodeling acyltransferase is permiss
ive with regard to substrate chain length, the myristate specificity in CPI
anchors is very high. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.