Cellular metabolites, such as acyl-CoA, can modify proteins, leading to protein posttranslational modifications (PTMs). One such PTM is lysine succinylation, which is regulated by sirtuin 5 (SIRT5). Although numerous proteins are modified by lysine succinylation, the physiological significance of lysine succinylation and SIRT5 remains elusive. Here, by profiling acyl-CoA molecules in various mouse tissues, we have discovered that different tissues have different acyl-CoA profiles and that succinyl-CoA is the most abundant acyl-CoA molecule in the heart. This interesting observation has prompted us to examine protein lysine succinylation in different mouse tissues in the presence and absence of SIRT5. Protein lysine succinylation predominantly accumulates in the heart when Sirt5 is deleted. Using proteomic studies, we have identified many cardiac proteins regulated by SIRT5. Our data suggest that ECHA, a protein involved in fatty acid oxidation, is a major enzyme that is regulated by SIRT5 and affects heart function. Sirt5 knockout (KO) mice have lower ECHA activity, increased longchain acyl-CoAs, and decreased ATP in the heart under fasting conditions. Sirt5 KO mice develop hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, as evident from the increased heart weight relative to body weight, as well as reduced shortening and ejection fractions. These findings establish that regulating heart metabolism and function is a major physiological function of lysine succinylation and SIRT5.sirtuin | lysine succinylation | fatty acid metabolism | desuccinylation | hypertrophic cardiomyopathy P rotein posttranslational modifications (PTMs) contribute toward the functional diversity of proteomes through regulating their activity, stability, and cellular localization. Many novel PTMs have been identified recently that result from enzymatic or nonenzymatic reactions with metabolites (1-5). Lysine, being the most frequently posttranslationally modified amino acid, has become the target of various PTMs such as acetylation, methylation, propionylation, butyrylation, crotonylation, succinylation, malonylation, glutarylation, long-chain fatty acylation, ubiquitination, and 2-hydroxyisobutyrylation (1, 3-9). Unlike lysine acetylation, lysine succinylation is a relatively new PTM and the succinyl donor is presumably succinyl-CoA. Acetylation on lysine neutralizes the positive charge of lysine side chain and is known to affect the structure and function of chromatin (10) as well as cellular metabolism (11). However, succinylation on lysine undergoes a complete charge reversal by changing a positively charged side chain to a negatively charged one. Regarding the change in charge, lysine succinylation is similar to phosphorylation, producing a two-unit charge shift in the modified residues. So, it can be anticipated that lysine succinylation would have a significant role in metabolic pathways, as was previously found for acetylation or phosphorylation.Sirtuins are an evolutionarily conserved family of NAD-dependent lysine deacylases. Among the seven mammalia...

Mammalian SIRT7 is a member of the sirtuin family that regulate multiple biological processes including genome stability, metabolic pathways, stress responses, and tumorigenesis. SIRT7 has been shown to be important for ribosome biogenesis and transcriptional regulation. SIRT7 knockout mice exhibit complications associated with fatty liver and increased aging in hematopoietic stem cells. However, the molecular basis for its biological function remains unclear, in part due to the lack of efficient enzymatic activity in vitro. Previously we have demonstrated that double-stranded DNA could activate SIRT7’s deacetylase activity in vitro, allowing it to deacetylate H3K18 in the context of chromatin. Here we show that RNA can increase the catalytic efficiency of SIRT7 even better and that SIRT7 can remove long chain fatty acyl groups more efficiently than removing acetyl groups. Truncation and mutagenesis studies revealed residues at both the amino and carboxyl termini of SIRT7 that are involved in RNA-binding and important for activity. RNA immunoprecipitation-sequencing (RIP-seq) identified ribosomal RNA (rRNA) as the predominant RNA binding partners of SIRT7. The associated RNA was able to effectively activate the deacetylase and defatty-acylase activities of SIRT7. Knockdown of SIRT7 increased the lysine fatty acylation of several nuclear proteins based on metabolic labeling with an alkyne-tagged fatty acid analog, supporting that the defatty-acylase activity of SIRT7 is physiologically relevant. These findings provide important insights into the biological functions of SIRT7, as well as an improved platform to develop SIRT7 modulators.

Sirt5, localized in the mitochondria, is a member of sirtuin family of NAD+-dependent deacetylases. Sirt5 was shown to deacetylate and activate carbamoyl phosphate synthase 1. Most recently, Sirt5 was reported to be the predominant protein desuccinylase and demalonylase in the mitochondria because the ablation of Sirt5 enhanced the global succinylation and malonylation of mitochondrial proteins, including many metabolic enzymes. In order to determine the physiological role of Sirt5 in metabolic homeostasis, we generated a germline Sirt5 deficient (Sirt5−/−) mouse model and performed a thorough metabolic characterization of this mouse line. Although a global protein hypersuccinylation and elevated serum ammonia during fasting were observed in our Sirt5−/− mouse model, Sirt5 deficiency did not lead to any overt metabolic abnormalities under either chow or high fat diet conditions. These observations suggest that Sirt5 is likely to be dispensable for the metabolic homeostasis under the basal conditions.

Sirtuin inhibitors have attracted much interest due to the involvement of sirtuins in various biological processes. Several SIRT2-selective inhibitors have been developed, and some exhibit anticancer activities. To facilitate the choice of inhibitors in future studies and the development of better inhibitors, we directly compared several reported SIRT2-selective inhibitors: AGK2, SirReal2, Tenovin-6, and TM. In vitro, TM is the most potent and selective inhibitor, and only TM could inhibit the demyristoylation activity of SIRT2. SirReal2, Tenovin-6, and TM all showed cytotoxicity in cancer cell lines, with Tenovin-6 being the most potent, but only TM showed cancer-cell-specific toxicity. All four compounds inhibited the anchorage-independent growth of HCT116 cells, but the effect of TM was most significantly affected by SIRT2 overexpression, suggesting that the anticancer effect of TM depends more on SIRT2 inhibition. These results not only provide useful guidance about choosing the right SIRT2 inhibitor in future studies, but also suggest general practices that should be followed for small-molecule inhibitor development activities.