Unsaturated Fatty Acid Synthesis in the Gastric Pathogen Helicobacter pylori Proceeds via a Backtracking Mechanism

Hongkai Bi, Lei Zhu, Jia Jia, Liping Zeng, John E. Cronan

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Helicobacter pylori is a Gram-negative bacterium that inhabits the upper gastrointestinal tract in humans, and the presence of this pathogen in the gut microbiome increases the risk of peptic ulcers and stomach cancer. H. pylori depends on unsaturated fatty acid (UFA) biosynthesis for maintaining membrane structure and function. Although some of the H. pylori enzymes involved in UFA biosynthesis are functionally homologous with the enzymes found in Escherichia coli, we show here that an enzyme HP0773, now annotated as FabX, uses an unprecedented backtracking mechanism to not only dehydrogenate decanoyl-acyl carrier protein (ACP) in a reaction that parallels that of acyl-CoA dehydrogenase, the first enzyme of the fatty acid β-oxidation cycle, but also isomerizes trans-2-decenoyl-ACP to cis-3-decenoyl-ACP, the key UFA synthetic intermediate. Thus, FabX reverses the normal fatty acid synthesis cycle in H. pylori at the C10 stage. Overall, this unusual FabX activity may offer a broader explanation for how many bacteria that lack the canonical pathway enzymes produce UFA-containing phospholipids.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)1480-1489
Number of pages10
JournalCell chemical biology
Volume23
Issue number12
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 22 2016

Keywords

  • dehydrogenase
  • electron acceptor
  • flavin
  • isomerase
  • unsaturated fatty acid symthesis

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Biochemistry
  • Molecular Medicine
  • Molecular Biology
  • Pharmacology
  • Drug Discovery
  • Clinical Biochemistry

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