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Updated: Jun 6, 2026

Preparation and In Vivo Use of an Activity-based Probe for N-acylethanolamine Acid Amidase
Published on: November 23, 2016
N-acylethanolamines as novel alcohol dehydrogenase 3 substrates
Milena Ivkovic1, Daniel R Dempsey, Sumit Handa
1Department of Chemistry, University of South Florida, 4202 E. Fowler Ave., CHE 205, Tampa, FL 33620-5250, USA.
None:
N-acylethanolamines (NAEs) are members of the fatty acid amide family. The NAEs have been proposed to serve as metabolic precursors to N-acylglycines (NAGs). The sequential oxidation of the NAEs by an alcohol dehydrogenase and an aldehyde dehydrogenase would yield the N-acylglycinals and/or the NAGs. Alcohol dehydrogenase 3 (ADH3) is one enzyme that might catalyze this reaction. To define a potential role for ADH3 in NAE catabolism, we synthesized a set of NAEs and evaluated these as ADH3 substrates. NAEs were oxidized by ADH3, yielding the N-acylglycinals as the product. The (V/K)(app) values for the NAEs included here were low relative to cinnamyl alcohol. Our data show that the NAEs can serve as alcohol dehydrogenase substrates.
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