Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Insight into Arthrospira platensis Δ9 desaturase: a key enzyme in poly-unsaturated fatty acid synthesis

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Molecular Biology Reports Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Membrane-bound Δ9 desaturase perform oxygenated desaturation reactions to insert the first double bonds within fatty acyl chains between C9 and C10 positions of most saturated substrates. Arthrospira platensis, a blue green microalga, is an important source of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) such as oleic, linoleic and linolenic acids lending benefits and functions in dietetics and therapeutic uses. In this paper, we report homology modeling and docking studies of a Δ9 desaturase from Arthrospira platensis strain. The protein model showed high topology resemblance compared to membrane-bound desaturases with a cytoplasmic core displaying the catalytic site and a transmembrane domain created by four α-helices. The cytoplasmic cap contained the three conserved-histidine boxes typical for all membrane bound desaturases. The protein model was used to perform protein–protein docking and the dimer structure was generated. The two monomers are tightly related with hydrophobic interactions between the transmembrane domain helices. The study highlighted also the potent role of a particular 53 residues sequence located at the N terminal end of the enzyme.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Saei AA, Ghanbari P, Barzegari A (2012) Haematococcus as a promising cell factory to produce recombinant pharmaceutical proteins. Mol Biol Rep 39:9931–9939

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Chávez-Fuentes P, Ruiz-Marin A, Canedo-López Y (2018) Biodiesel synthesis from Chlorella vulgaris under effect of nitrogen limitation, intensity and quality light: estimation on the based fatty acids profiles. Mol Biol Rep. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11033-018-4266-9

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  3. Hamed I (2016) The evolution and versatility of microalgal biotechnology: a review. Compr Rev Food Sci Food Saf 15:1104–1123

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Uttaro AD (2006) Biosynthesis of polyunsaturated fatty acids in lower eukaryotes. IUBMB Life 58:563–571

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Soveyd N, Abdolahi M, Bitarafan S et al (2017) Molecular mechanisms of omega-3 fatty acids in the migraine headache. Iran J Neurol 16:210–217

    PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  6. Heird WC, Lapillonne A (2005) The role of essential fatty acids in development. Annu Rev Nutr 25:549–571

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Nakamura MT, Nara TY (2004) Structure, function, and dietary regulation of ∆6, ∆5, and ∆9 desaturases. Annu Rev Nutr 24:345–376

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  8. Zhang X, Wei D, Li M, Qi Y et al (2009) Evolution-related amino acids play important role in determining regioselectivity of fatty acid desaturase from Pichia pastoris. Mol Biol Rep 36:567–573

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Cevc G (1993) Phospholipids handbook. CRC Press, Boca Raton

    Google Scholar 

  10. Garba L, Mohamad Yussoff MA, Abd Halim KB et al (2018) Homology modeling and docking studies of a ∆9-fatty acid desaturase from a cold-tolerant Pseudomonas sp. AMS8. PeerJ 6:e4347

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Shanklin J, Cahoon EB (1998) Desaturation and related modifications of fatty acids. Annu Rev Plant Physiol Plant Mol Biol 49:611–641

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  12. Kachroo A, Shanklin J, Whittle E et al (2007) The Arabidopsis stearoyl-acyl carrier protein-desaturase family and the contribution of leaf isoforms to oleic acid synthesis. Plant Mol Biol 63:257–271

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  13. Los DA, Murata N (1998) Structure and expression of fatty acid desaturases. Biochim Biophys Acta 1394:3–15

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  14. Wada H, Schmidt H, Heinz E, Murata N (1993) In vitro ferredoxin-dependent desaturation of fatty acids in cyanobacterial thylakoid membranes. J Bacteriol 175:544–547

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  15. Schultz DJ, Suh MC, Ohlrogge JB (2000) Stearoyl-acyl carrier protein and unusual acyl-acyl carrier protein desaturase activities are differentially influenced by ferredoxin. Plant Physiol 124:681–692

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  16. Hongsthong A, Subudhi S, Sirijuntarut M et al (2006) Revealing the complementation of ferredoxin by cytochrome b (5) in the Spirulina-(6)-desaturation reaction by N-terminal fusion and co-expression of the fungal-cytochrome b (5) domain and Spirulina-(6)-acyl-lipid desaturase. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 72:1192–1201

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  17. Murphy DJ (1999) Production of novel oils in plants. Curr Opin Biotechnol 10:175–180

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  18. Ben Amor F, Barkallah M, Elleuch F et al (2017) Cyanobacteria as source of marine bioactive compounds: molecular specific detection based on ∆9 desaturase gene. Int J Biol Macromol 105:1440–1445

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  19. Lopez-Huertas E (2010) Health effects of oleic acid and long chain omega-3 fatty acids (EPA and DHA) enriched milks. A review of intervention studies. Pharmacol Res 61:200–207

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  20. Waterman E, Lockwood B (2007) Active components and clinical applications of olive oil. Altern Med Rev J Clin Ther 12:331–342

    Google Scholar 

  21. Szklarczyk D, Morris JH, Cook H et al (2017) The STRING database in 2017: quality-controlled protein–protein association networks, made broadly accessible. Nucleic Acids Res 45:362–368

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Di Tommaso P, Moretti S, Xenarios I et al (2011) T-Coffee: a web server for the multiple sequence alignment of protein and RNA sequences using structural information and homology extension. Nucleic Acids Res 39:13–17

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Robert X, Gouet P (2014) Deciphering key features in protein structures with the new ENDscript server. Nucleic Acids Res 42:320–324

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Zimmermann L, Stephens A, Nam S-Z et al (2017) A completely reimplemented MPI bioinformatics toolkit with a new HHpred server at its core. J Mol Biol 430:2237–2243

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Laskowski RA, MacArthur MW, Moss DS, Thornton JM (1993) PROCHECK: a program to check the stereochemical quality of protein structures. J Appl Crystallogr 26:283–291

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  26. Kozakov D, Hall DR, Xia B et al (2017) The ClusPro web server for protein-protein docking. Nat Protoc 12:255–278

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  27. Nayeri FD, Yarizade K (2014) Bioinformatics study of ∆-12 fatty acid desaturase 2 (FAD2) gene in oilseeds. Mol Biol Rep 41:5077–5087

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Wang H, Klein MG, Zou H et al (2015) Crystal structure of human stearoyl-coenzyme A desaturase in complex with substrate. Nat Struct Mol Biol 22:581–585

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  29. Rawicz W, Olbrich KC, McIntosh T et al (2000) Effect of chain length and unsaturation on elasticity of lipid bilayers. Biophys J 79:328–339

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  30. Shanklin J, Guy JE, Mishra G, Lindqvist Y (2009) Desaturases: emerging models for understanding functional diversification of diiron-containing enzymes. J Biol Chem 284:18559–18563

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  31. Lou Y, Shanklin J (2010) Evidence that the yeast desaturase Ole1p exists as a dimer in vivo. J Biol Chem 285:19384–19390

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  32. Haas JA, Fox BG (2002) Fluorescence anisotropy studies of enzyme-substrate complex formation in stearoyl-ACP desaturase. Biochemistry 41:14472–14481

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  33. Davydov R, Behrouzian B, Smoukov S et al (2005) Effect of substrate on the diiron(III) site in stearoyl acyl carrier protein ∆ 9-desaturase as disclosed by cryoreduction electron paramagnetic resonance/electron nuclear double resonance spectroscopy. Biochemistry 44:1309–1315

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the Tunisian Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research for financial assistance.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire de Biotechnologie Végétale Appliquée à l’Amélioration des Cultures, Faculty of Sciences of Sfax, University of Sfax, Sfax, 3000, Tunisia

    Faten Ben Amor & Imen Fendri

  2. Unité de Biotechnologie des Algues, Biological Engineering Department, National School of Engineers of Sfax, University of Sfax, Sfax, 3038, Tunisia

    Hajer Ben Hlima & Slim Abdelkafi

Authors
  1. Faten Ben Amor
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Hajer Ben Hlima
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Slim Abdelkafi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Imen Fendri
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hajer Ben Hlima.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Electronic supplementary material

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Ben Amor, F., Ben Hlima, H., Abdelkafi, S. et al. Insight into Arthrospira platensis Δ9 desaturase: a key enzyme in poly-unsaturated fatty acid synthesis. Mol Biol Rep 45, 1873–1879 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11033-018-4333-2

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11033-018-4333-2

Keywords

Search

Navigation