PPARα activation induces N(ε)-Lys-acetylation of rat liver peroxisomal multifunctional enzyme type 1

Peroxisomes are ubiquitous subcellular organelles that participate in metabolic and disease processes, with few of its proteins undergoing posttranslational modifications. As the role of lysine-acetylation has expanded into the cellular intermediary metabolism, we used a combination of differential centrifugation, organelle isolation by linear density gradient centrifugation, western blot analysis, and peptide fingerprinting and amino acid sequencing by mass spectrometry to investigate protein acetylation in control and ciprofibrate-treated rat liver peroxisomes. Organelle protein samples isolated by density gradient centrifugation from PPARα-agonist treated rat liver screened with an anti-N(ε)-acetyl lysine antibody revealed a single protein band of 75 kDa. Immunoprecipitation with this antibody resulted in the precipitation of a protein from the protein pool of ciprofibrate-induced peroxisomes, but not from the protein pool of non-induced peroxisomes. Peptide mass fingerprinting analysis identified the protein as the peroxisomal multifunctional enzyme type 1. In addition, mass spectrometry-based amino acid sequencing resulted in the identification of unique peptides containing 4 acetylated-Lys residues (K¹⁵⁵, K¹⁷³, K¹⁹⁰, and K⁵⁸³). This is the first report that demonstrates posttranslational acetylation of a peroxisomal enzyme in PPARα-dependent proliferation of peroxisomes in rat liver.