Lysine Acetylome Profiling Reveals Diverse Functions of Acetylation in Deinococcus Radiodurans

D. radiodurans is distinguished by the most radioresistant organism identified to date. Lysine acetylation is a highly conserved post-translational modification that plays an essential role in the regulation of many cellular processes and may contribute to its extraordinary radioresistance. We integrate acetyl-lysine enrichment strategy, high-resolution mass spectrometry, and bioinformatics to profile the lysine acetylated proteins for the first time. It is striking that almost half of the total annotated proteins are identified as acetylated forms, which is the largest acetylome dataset reported in D. radiodurans to date. The acetylated proteins are involved in metabolic pathways, propanoate metabolism, carbon metabolism, fatty acid metabolism, and the tricarboxylic acid cycle. The results of this study reinforce the notion that acetylation plays critical regulatory roles in diverse aspects of the cellular process, especially in DNA damage repair and metabolism. It provides insight into the roles of lysine acetylation in the robust resistance to radiation.