By Irene Hsiao
The Dickinson lab observes dynamic lipidation of proteins in mammalian mitochondria in their recent paper, “Active and dynamic mitochondrial S-depalmitoylation revealed by targeted fluorescent probes,” published in Nature Communications this month. Using a small molecule fluorescent probe engineered to measure the activity of acyl-protein thioesterases, enzymes that remove the lipid palmitate from cysteine residues on proteins, the Dickinsom lab shows that proteins within the mitochondria are at least partly regulated by the removal of lipid marks. No proteins known to remove these markers have previously been shown to function in the mitochondria, so their work opens questions pertaining to posttranslational modification of proteins as well as metabolic regulation.