Mutually exclusive acetylation and ubiquitylation among enzymes involved in glucose metabolism

The posttranslational modification (PTM) in protein occurs in a regiospecific manner. In addition, the most commonly occurring PTMs involve similar residues in proteins such as acetylation, ubiquitylation, methylation and sumoylation at the lysine residue and phosphorylation and O-GlcNAc modification at serine/threonine residues. Thus, the possibility of modification sites where two such PTMs may occur in a mutually exclusive manner (ME-PTM) is much higher than known. A recent surge in the identification and the mapping of the commonly occurring PTMs in proteins has revealed that this is indeed the case. However, in what way such ME-PTM sites are regulated and what could be their relevance in the coordinated network of protein function remains to be known. To gain such potential insights in a biological context, we analyzed two most prevalent PTMs on the lysine residue by acetylation and ubiquitylation along with the most abundant PTM in proteins by phosphorylation among enzymes involved in glucose metabolism, a fundamental process in biology. The analysis of the PTM data sets has revealed two important clues that may be intrinsically associated with their regulation and function. First, the most commonly occurring PTMs by phosphorylation, acetylation and ubiquitylation are widespread and clustered in most of the enzymes involved in glucose metabolism; and the prevalence of phosphorylation sites correlates with the number of acetylation and ubiquitylation sites including the ME-modification sites. Second, the prevalence of ME-acetylation/ubiquitylation sites is exceptionally high among enzymes involved in glucose metabolism and have distinct pattern among the subset of enzymes of glucose metabolism such as glycolysis, tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle, glycogen synthesis, and the irreversible steps of gluconeogenesis. We hypothesize that phosphorylation including tyrosine phosphorylation plays an important role in the regulation of ME-acetylation/ubiquitylation sites and their similar pattern among the subset of functionally related proteins allows their coordinated regulation in the normal physiology. Similarly their coordinated dysregulation may underlie the disease processes such as reprogrammed metabolism in cancer, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases. Our hypothesis provides an opportunity to understand the regulation of ME-PTMs in proteins and their relevance at the network level and is open for experimental validation.