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A multifunctional enzyme is involved in bacterial ether lipid biosynthesis

Nature Chemical Biology volume 10, pages 425–427 (2014)Cite this article

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Abstract

Fatty acid–derived ether lipids are present not only in most vertebrates but also in some bacteria. Here we describe what is to our knowledge the first gene cluster involved in the biosynthesis of such lipids in myxobacteria that encodes the multifunctional enzyme ElbD, which shows similarity to polyketide synthases. Initial characterization of elbD mutants in Myxococcus xanthus and Stigmatella aurantiaca showed the importance of these ether lipids for fruiting body formation and sporulation.

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Figure 1: Phenotypic investigation of the elbD mutant.
Figure 2: Differential analysis of lipid fractions and biochemical characterization of ElbD.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to M. Ring for the identification of the elb operon; O. Schimming for providing the phosphopantetheinyl transferases; C. Kegler for providing expression plasmids pSUMO3_CK4, pSUMO3_CK5, pCOLA_tacI/I and pACYC_tacI/I; S. Fuchs for the MALDI-MS measurements; and A. Perèz for providing acyl donors. H.B.B. is grateful to the German Research Foundation (DFG) for an Emmy Noether fellowship that initiated this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Merck-Stiftungsprofessur für Molekulare Biotechnologie, Fachbereich Biowissenschaften, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany

    Wolfram Lorenzen, Tilman Ahrendt, Kenan A J Bozhüyük & Helge B Bode

Authors
  1. Wolfram Lorenzen
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  2. Tilman Ahrendt
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  3. Kenan A J Bozhüyük
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  4. Helge B Bode
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Contributions

H.B.B. conceived the work, W.L. and T.A. designed and performed the myxobacterial sporulation assay, and W.L. designed and performed all of the other experiments. Molecular modeling and ligand docking experiments were performed by K.A.J.B. H.B.B. and W.L. wrote the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Helge B Bode.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Text and Figures

Supplementary Results, Supplementary Tables 1–16, Supplementary Note and Supplementary Figures 1–12. (PDF 11638 kb)

Supplementary Data Set 1

Complete FAME-GC-MS data from Figure 1b, represented as percentage of all fatty acid methyl esters. (XLSX 48 kb)

Supplementary Data Set 2

Closest homologs of ElbA–E from Myxococcus xanthus and the human alkyl-dihydroxyacetonephosphate synthase found in other sequenced species of the order myxococcales by means of BLAST P search. (XLSX 21 kb)

Supplementary Data Set 3

Result of MAFFT alignment from which the cladogram in Supplementary Figure 9 was calculated. (XLSX 26 kb)

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Lorenzen, W., Ahrendt, T., Bozhüyük, K. et al. A multifunctional enzyme is involved in bacterial ether lipid biosynthesis. Nat Chem Biol 10, 425–427 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchembio.1526

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