Regulation of histone acetylation is fundamental to the utilization of eukaryotic genomes in chromatin. Aberrant acetylation contributes to disease and can be clinically combated by inhibiting the responsible enzymes. Our knowledge of the histone acetylation system is patchy because we so far lacked the methodology to describe acetylation patterns and their genesis by integrated enzyme activiti...

Reversible acetylation of α-tubulin is an evolutionarily conserved modification in microtubule networks. Despite its prevalence, the physiological function and regulation of microtubule acetylation remain poorly understood. Here we report that macrophages challenged by bacterial lipopolysaccharides (LPS) undergo extensive microtubule acetylation. Suppression of LPS-induced microtubule acetylati...

Post-translational modification of proteins by lysine acetylation plays important regulatory roles in living cells. The budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a widely used unicellular eukaryotic model organism in biomedical research. S. cerevisiae contains several evolutionary conserved lysine acetyltransferases and deacetylases. However, only a few dozen acetylation sites in S. cerevisiae ...

The identification of lysine acetylation of steroid hormone receptors has previously been based on the presence of consensus motif (K/R)XKK. This study reports the discovery by mass spectrometry of a novel progesterone receptor acetylation site at Lys-183 that is not in the consensus motif. In vivo acetylation and mutagenesis experiments revealed that Lys-183 is a primary site of progesterone r...

There is social, environmental and increasing economic pressure on the industrial sector to substitute non-renewable resources with renewable ones as the increasing World population is exponentially depleting the fossil fuel supplies of the Earth. Each year about 260 million tons of plastics are produced from crude oil and most of it ends up as waste. Producing biodegradable plastics from renew...

To visualize histone acetylation in living cells, we developed a genetically encoded fluorescent resonance energy transfer (FRET)-based indicator. Response of the indicator reflects changes in the acetylation state of both K5 and K8 in histone H4. Using this acetylation indicator, we were able to monitor the dynamic fluctuation of histone H4 acetylation levels during mitosis, as well as acetyla...

Protein acetylation affects synaptic plasticity and memory, but its effects on synapse composition have not been addressed. We found that protein acetylation promotes the dendritic clustering of the excitatory postsynaptic scaffold protein PSD95 in hippocampal neurons, without affecting the total levels of this protein. Cortactin, an F-actin-binding protein enriched in dendritic spines, is a su...

Rates of turnover for the posttranslational acetylation of core histones were measured in logarithmically growing yeast cells by radioactive acetate labeling to near steady-state conditions. On average, acetylation half-lives were approximately 15 min for histone H4, 10 min for histone H3, 4 min for histone H2B, and 5 min for histone H2A. These rates were much faster than the several hours that...

Huntingtin (Htt) is a protein with a polyglutamine stretch in the N-terminus and expansion of the polyglutamine stretch causes Huntington's disease (HD). Htt is a multiple domain protein whose function has not been well characterized. Previous reports have shown, however, that post-translational modifications of Htt such as phosphorylation and acetylation modulate mutant Htt toxicity, localizat...