Opening a new path to lipoic acid.

Lipoic acid (Fig. 1) is a cofactor that is critical to the catalytic function of several key enzymes in intermediary metabolism that are found in all domains of life. There are two pathways to lipoyl-modified proteins. The de novo pathway from octanoylacyl carrier protein (ACP) involves the consecutive action of LipB and LipA (Fig. 2A), and the LplA-dependent salvage pathway activates and transfers environmental lipoic acid to the lipoyl protein domains (Fig. 2B). In this issue, Hermes and Cronan (6) identify gain-of-function mutations in LplA that allow cells to bypass the requirement for LipB in de novo lipoic acid formation (Fig. 2C). Normally, lipB null strains require either a lipoate or an octanoate supplement for growth, but these lplA mutants have increased affinities for octanoic acid, permitting them to utilize the low concentrations of intracellular octanoate, thus substituting for the LipB reaction. The characterization of these suppressor strains provides new information on the biochemistry of lipoate metabolism and reveals the existence of intracellular pools of medium-chain fatty acids that previously were not thought to exist. Functions of lipoic acid. Lipoic acid is essential for the functions of several enzymes in oxidative metabolism (2). A good example is pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH), where covalently bound lipoate shuttles reaction intermediates between the active sites of a multisubunit complex (11). Lipoic acid is bound to the dihydrolipoyl transacetylase (E2) subunit in its oxidized state as a five-membered, disulfide-linked ring (Fig. 1). The E1 subunit of PDH decarboxylates pyruvate, forming 2-hydroxyethyl-2-thiamine pyrophosphate, and the lipoic acid disulfide is reduced when E2 accepts an acetaldehyde moiety from the thiamine adduct. Acetyl-coenzyme A is then released via a thioester exchange reaction with coenzyme A. The disulfide ring of lipoate is reformed by the FAD-dependent dihydrolipoyl dehydrogenase component (E3). Other important bacterial lipoyl enzymes include the glycine cleavage system, -ketoglutarate dehydrogenase, and the branched-chain ketoacid dehydrogenase that is involved in supplying branched-chain precursors for fatty acid synthesis. In Escherichia coli, strains defective in lipoic acid synthesis are unable to grow aerobically on glucose minimal medium unless it is supplemented with acetate and succinate to bypass the requirement for PDH and -ketoglutarate dehydrogenase (5, 13). Bypassing LipB. The de novo biosynthetic pathway in E. coli requires lipA and lipB (Fig. 2A). Genetic studies identified the product of the lipA gene as responsible for inserting the two sulfur atoms into the octanoate precursor (13). LipA is an S-adenosylmethionine-dependent enzyme that inserts sulfur at carbons 6 and 8 of octanoate using a radical mechanism (9). A key discovery was that LipA introduces the sulfur atoms into octanoate bound to the E2 subunit of PDH and not into free octanoic acid or octanoyl-ACP (15). Thus, the de novo biosynthetic pathway begins by the diversion of octanoyl-ACP from the type II fatty acid synthesis cycle by LipB, an acyltransferase that transfers the octanoyl moiety from ACP to the lysine acceptor in the E2 domain via an acyl enzyme intermediate (14). The most straightforward route to lipoyl enzymes is the salvage pathway, which involves uptake of environmental lipoic acid followed by its activation and transfer to the E2 domains (Fig. 2B). This two-step reaction is performed by LplA. The first step is the ATP-dependent formation of an LplA-bound lipoyl-AMP intermediate, followed by transfer of lipoate to the E2 domain by its acyltransferase activity. Whereas LplA has a high affinity for lipoate, LplA also weakly activates several lipoate analogs and octanoate for transfer to the E2 apoproteins (4, 9). This lack of substrate specificity allows LipB null mutants to grow in the presence of either a lipoate or an octanoate supplement (15). The strategy employed by Hermes and Cronan was to select for variants of a lipB null strain that were able to grow without an exogenous source of lipoate or octanoate (6). Two such strains were isolated. They quickly determined that the mutations were in lplA and that the modified genes encoded either the LplA(V19L) or LplA(S221P) mutant protein. Strains with the suppressor mutations contain detectable quantities of lipoyl domains, and the growth of the suppressor mutants still depends on a functional lipA gene. The discovery that the affinity of LplA for octanoate was increased by these point mutations suggested that the LplA mutant proteins activated an intracellular source of octanoate to bypass LipB function (Fig. 2C). LplA mutants and protein structure. The LplA proteins consist of two domains, but they are not always organized in the same manner. E. coli LplA has a large amino-terminal domain and a smaller carboxy-terminal domain (3). In Streptomyces coelicolor, the carboxy-terminal domain of E. coli LplA is predicted at the amino terminus. The crystal structures of LplA from the archaeon Thermoplasma acidophilum lack the characteristic carboxy-terminal domain (7, 8). This conundrum was recently solved by the demonstration that the carboxyterminal domain of E. coli LplA belongs to a separate protein, called LplB, in T. acidophilum (1). Biochemical experiments show that the LplB domain is required for lipoyl-adenylate formation, although lipoyl-AMP is bound to the LplA subunit and can be transferred to E2 domains in the absence of LplB. The LplA(V19L) mutant was isolated four times in suppressor strains created by random mutagenesis using error-prone PCR, indicating its importance in influencing substrate specificity. An earlier selection for LplA mutants resistant to selenolipoate, an analog with sulfur atoms replaced with selenium, * Mailing address: Department of Infectious Diseases, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, 262 Danny Thomas Place, Memphis, TN 38105. Phone: (901) 595-3491. Fax: (901) 595-3099. E-mail: [email protected]. Published ahead of print on 4 September 2009.