Chemical tools for unraveling the substrate specificity of the lysine deacylase enzymes

The lysine deacylase (KDAC) enzymes catalyze hydrolytic removal of acyl functionalities from theε-amino group of lysine residues ina variety of proteins including histones, and KDAC-mediated deacetylation of proteins has been established as a key epigeneticandmetabolic regulator. Recent studies have highlighted lysine acetylation as a general post-translational modification (PTM), andagrowing list of non-histone proteins has been identified as substrates for the KDACs, thereby extending their potential impactoncellular function. Furthermore, other acyl groups (e.g., crotonyl, malonyl, succinyl, glutaryl, myristoyl and 3-phosphoglyceroyl) havebeen identified as lysine PTMs, and both zinc- and NAD+-dependent KDACs have demonstrated capability to remove suchmodifications. These findings suggest that KDACs with impaired deacetylase activity might in fact be functional deacylases catalyzinghydrolysis of other acylamides. To address these interesting observations, we have synthesized a library of substrates containing different peptide scaffolds functionalized with a number of N - ε -acyl moieties. Library synthesis and its evaluation against a panel of human KDACs including zinc-dependent HDACs 1–11 as well as NAD + -dependent sirtuins (SIRT1–7) will be discussed

Recognition of double-stranded DNA using energetically activated duplexes with interstrand zippers of 1-, 2-or 4-pyrenyl-functionalized O2 '-alkylated RNA monomers

Despite advances with triplex-forming oligonucleotides, peptide nucleic acids, polyamides and - more recently - engineered proteins, there remains an urgent need for synthetic ligands that enable specific recognition of double-stranded (ds) DNA to accelerate studies aiming at detecting, regulating and modifying genes. Invaders, i.e., energetically activated DNA duplexes with interstrand zipper arrangements of intercalator-functionalized nucleotides, are emerging as an attractive approach toward this goal. Here, we characterize and compare Invaders based on 1-, 2- and 4-pyrenyl-functionalized O2′-alkylated uridine monomers X–Z by means of thermal denaturation experiments, optical spectroscopy, force-field simulations and recognition experiments using DNA hairpins as model targets. We demonstrate that Invaders with +1 interstrand zippers of X or Y monomers efficiently recognize mixed-sequence DNA hairpins with single nucleotide fidelity. Intercalator-mediated unwinding and activation of the double-stranded probe, coupled with extraordinary stabilization of probe-target duplexes (ΔT(m)/modification up to +14.0 °C), provides the driving force for dsDNA recognition. In contrast, Z-modified Invaders show much lower dsDNA recognition efficiency. Thus, even very conservative changes in the chemical makeup of the intercalator-functionalized nucleotides used to activate Invader duplexes, affects dsDNA-recognition efficiency of the probes, which highlights the importance of systematic structure-property studies. The insight from this study will guide future design of Invaders for applications in molecular biology and nucleic acid diagnostics

An azumamide C analogue without the zinc-binding functionality

Histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors have attracted considerable attention due to their promise as therapeutic agents.</p