The disulfide linkage and the free sulfhydryl accessibility of acyl-coenzyme A:cholesterol acyltransferase 1 as studied by using mPEG5000-maleimide.

Acyl-coenzyme A:cholesterol acyltransferase (ACAT) is a membrane protein located in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). It plays important roles in cellular cholesterol homeostasis. Human ACAT1 (hACAT1) contains nine cysteines (C). To quantify and map its disulfide linkage, we performed thiol-specific modifications by mPEG(5000)-maleimide (PEG-mal) and iodoacetamide (IA) under denatured condition, using extracts that contain wild-type or various single C to A mutant hACAT1s. With the wild-type enzyme, seven Cs could be modified before dithiothreitol (DTT) treatment; nine Cs could be modified after DTT treatment. With the C528A or the C546A enzyme, all eight Cs could be modified before or after DTT treatment. With all other remaining single C to A mutant enzymes, six Cs could be modified before DTT treatment, and eight Cs could be modified after DTT treatment. We next performed Lys-C protease digestion on hACAT1 with a hemagglutinin (HA) tag at the C-terminus. The digests were treated with or without DTT and analyzed by SDS-PAGE and Western blotting. The two predicted C-terminal fragments (K496-K531 and N532-F550-HA tag) were trapped as a single peptide band, but only when the digests were treated without DTT. Thus, C528 and C546 near the enzyme's C-terminus form a disulfide. PEG-mal is impermeable to ER membranes. We used PEG-mal to map the localizations of the seven free sulfhydryls and the disulfide bond of hACAT1 present in microsomal vesicles. The results show that C92 is located on the cytoplasmic side of the ER membrane and the disulfide is located in the ER lumen, while all other free Cs are located within the hydrophobic region(s) of the enzyme.