Crystal structure of the 500-kDa yeast acetyl-CoA carboxylase holoenzyme dimer.

Abstract

Acetyl-CoA carboxylase (ACC) has crucial roles in fatty acid metabolism and is an attractive target for drug discovery against diabetes, cancer and other diseases1–6. Saccharomyces cerevisiae ACC (ScACC) is crucial for the production of very-long-chain fatty acids and the maintenance of the nuclear envelope7,8. ACC contains biotin carboxylase (BC) and carboxyltransferase (CT) activities, and its biotin is linked covalently to the biotin carboxyl carrier protein (BCCP). Most eukaryotic ACCs are 250 kD, multi-domain enzymes and function as homo-dimers and higher oligomers. They contain a unique, 80 kD central region that shares no homology with other proteins. While the structures of the BC, CT and BCCP domains and other biotin-dependent carboxylase holoenzymes are known1,9–14, currently there is no structural information on the ACC holoenzyme. Here we report the crystal structure of the full-length, 500 kD holoenzyme dimer of ScACC. The structure is strikingly different from those of the other biotin-dependent carboxylases. The central region contains five domains and is important for positioning the BC and CT domains for catalysis. The structure unexpectedly reveals a dimer of the BC domain and extensive conformational differences compared to the structure of BC domain alone, which is a monomer. These structural changes explain why the BC domain alone is catalytically inactive and define the molecular mechanism for the inhibition of eukaryotic ACC by the natural product soraphen A15,16 and by phosphorylation of a Ser residue just prior to the BC domain core in mammalian ACC. The BC and CT active sites are separated by 80 Å, and the entire BCCP domain must translocate during catalysis.