Interactions of the acyl chain with the Saccharomyces cerevisiae acyl carrier protein.

Acyl carrier protein (ACP) domains are critical integral components of multifunctional type I fatty acid synthases (FAS I) and polyketide synthases (PKSs), where they shuttle the growing adducts of the synthesis between the catalytic domains. In contrast to ACP of mammalian FAS I, PKSs, and the dissociated fatty acid synthase type II systems (FAS II) of bacteria, fungal FAS I ACP consists of two subdomains, one comprising the canonical ACP fold observed in all FAS systems and the other representing an extra structural subdomain. While ACPs of dissociated FAS II are able to sequester the reaction intermediates during substrate shuttling, such a transport mechanism has not been observed in ACP domains of multifunctional FAS I and PKS systems. For a better understanding of the interaction between the canonical subdomain of fungal ACP with the growing acyl chain and the role of the structural subdomain, we determined the structure of the isolated Saccharomyces cerevisiae acyl carrier protein (ScACP) domain by NMR spectroscopy and investigated the interactions between ScACP and covalently attached substrate acyl chains of varying length by monitoring chemical shift perturbations. The interactions were mapped to the hydrophobic core of the canonical subdomain, while no perturbations were detected in the structural subdomain. A population analysis revealed that only approximately 15% of covalently attached decanoyl chains are sequestered by the ACP core, comparable to the mammalian FAS I and multifunctional PKS systems, which do not sequester their substrates. Finally, denaturation experiments show that both ScACP subdomains unfold cooperatively and that the weak interaction of the acyl chain with the hydrophobic core does not significantly affect the ACP stability.