Effects of lysine 2-hydroxyisobutyrylation on bacterial FabI activity and resistance to triclosan

Abstract

Lysine 2-hydroxyisobutyrylation (Khib) is a novel protein posttranslational modification conserved in eukaryotes and prokaryotes. However, the biological significance of Khib remains largely unknown. Here, through screening the proteome-wide Khib modification sites in bacteria using a bioinformatic method, we identified a potential Khib site (K201hib) targeted by de-2-hyroxyisobutyrylase CobB at the substrate-binding site of FabI, an enoyl-acyl carry protein reductase (EnvM or FabI) in fatty acid biosynthesis pathway. First, we confirmed that the previously identified de-2-hyroxyisobutyrylase CobB can remove Khib of FabI in an in vitro experiment. To investigate the biological effects of the Khib on FabI’s activity, amino acid substitutes were introduced to the modification sites of the protein of E. coli origin to mimic modified/unmodified status. We found that the mutant mimicking K201hib reduced FabI activity with decreased Michaelis constant (Km) and catalytic turnover number (kcat), while the mutant mimicking the unmodified form and the recombinant wild-type protein treated with CobB exhibited increased activity. However, the dissociation constant (KD) between FabI and NADH was not affected by the mutation mimicking the modification, suggesting that K201hib didn’t alter the binding between NADH and FabI. We also found that K201hib tended to increase the resistance of E. coli to triclosan (TCL), a widely-used antibiotics targeting FabI. Taken together, this study identified the regulatory role of Khib on FabI activity and pointed to a novel mechanism related to antibiotic resistance.