From dusty shelves toward the spotlight: growing evidence for Ap4A as an alarmone in maintaining RNA stability and proteostasis.

Autor: Young MK; Department of Bacteriology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA., Wang JD; Department of Bacteriology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA. Electronic address: wang@bact.wisc.edu.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Current opinion in microbiology [Curr Opin Microbiol] 2024 Oct; Vol. 81, pp. 102536. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 Aug 30.
DOI: 10.1016/j.mib.2024.102536
Abstrakt: Bacteria thrive in diverse environments and must withstand various stresses. A key stress response mechanism is the reprogramming of macromolecular biosynthesis and metabolic processes through alarmones - signaling nucleotides that accumulate intracellularly in response to metabolic stress. Diadenosine tetraphosphate (Ap4A), a putative alarmone, is produced in a noncanonical reaction by universally conserved aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases. Ap4A is ubiquitous across all domains of life and accumulates during heat and oxidative stress. Despite its early discovery in 1966, Ap4A's alarmone status remained inconclusive. Recent discoveries identified Ap4A as a precursor to RNA 5' caps in Escherichia coli. Additionally, Ap4A was found to directly bind to and allosterically inhibit the purine biosynthesis enzyme inosine 5'-monophosphate dehydrogenase, regulating guanosine triphosphate levels and enabling heat resistance in Bacillus subtilis. These findings, along with previous research, strongly suggest that Ap4A plays a crucial role as an alarmone, warranting further investigation to fully elucidate its functions.
Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
(Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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