Cloning and characterization of a lysosomal phospholipase A2, 1-O-acylceramide synthase

Recently, a novel enzyme, 1-O-acylceramide synthase (ACS), was purified and characterized from bovine brain. This enzyme has both calcium-independent phospholipase A(2) and transacylase activities. The discovery of this enzyme led us to propose a new pathway for ceramide metabolism in which the sn-2-acyl group of either phosphatidylethanolamine or phosphatidylcholine is transferred to the 1-hydroxyl group of ceramide. In this study, the partial amino acid sequences from the purified enzyme revealed that the enzyme contains amino acid sequences identical to those of human lecithin:cholesterol acyltransferase-like lysophospholipase (LLPL). The coding sequences of the mouse, bovine, and human genes were obtained from the respective kidney cDNAs by PCR. The open reading frames of LLPL were cloned into pcDNA3 to generate carboxyl-terminally tagged proteins. The expression of mouse LLPL in COS-7 cells demonstrated that transfected cells had higher transacylase and phospholipase A(2) activities than did non-transfected cells. Immunoprecipitation confirmed that LLPL had ACS activity. There were no significant lecithin:cholesterol acyltransferase and lysophospholipase activities in the mouse LLPL-transfected cells under either acidic or neutral conditions. Amino acid sequences from cDNAs of mouse, human, and bovine LLPLs demonstrated a signal peptide cleavage site, one lipase motif (AXSXG), and several N-linked glycosylation sites in each LLPL molecule. The replacement of serine with alanine in the lipase motif of mouse LLPL resulted in elimination of enzyme activity, indicating that the serine residue is part of the catalytic site. Deglycosylation of mouse, human, and bovine LLPLs yielded core proteins with a molecular mass of 42 kDa without change in enzyme activities. LLPL was post-translationally modified by signal peptide cleavage and N-linked glycosylation, and each mature LLPL had the same size core protein. Subcellular fractionation demonstrated that ACS activity co-localized with N-acetylglucosaminidase. Therefore, LLPL encodes a novel lysosomal enzyme, ACS.