Chemoenzymatic Ubiquitination of Artificial Substrates

Abstract

Probing an alternative route. Ubiquitin and Ub-like proteins (Ubl) are attached to cellular proteins through a conserved conjugation pathway. We demonstrate here that Ub and Ubl thioesters, the key intermediates of this pathway, can be readily transferred onto cysteine-containing artificial substrates. This finding provides new insight into the chemistry of Ub (Ubl) conjugation and can be used for creating different protein probes and microarrays.