The Specificities of Lysophosphatidic Acid Acyltransferase and Fatty Acid Desaturase Determine the High Content of Myristic and Myristoleic Acids in ICyanobacterium/I sp. IPPAS B-1200

• Published in: International journal of molecular sciences 2024-01, Vol.25 (2)
• Main Authors: Starikov, Alexander Y, Sidorov, Roman A, Mironov, Kirill S, Los, Dmitry A
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Saturated fatty acids
• ISSN: 1422-0067
• DOI: 10.3390/ijms25020774

The cyanobacterial strain Cyanobacterium sp. IPPAS B-1200 isolated from Lake Balkhash is characterized by high relative amounts of myristic (30%) and myristoleic (10%) acids. The remaining fatty acids (FAs) are represented mainly by palmitic (20%) and palmitoleic (40%) acids. We expressed the genes for lysophosphatidic acid acyltransferase (LPAAT; EC 2.3.1.51) and Δ9 fatty acid desaturase (FAD; EC 1.14.19.1) from Cyanobacterium sp. IPPAS B-1200 in Synechococcus elongatus PCC 7942, which synthesizes myristic and myristoleic acids at the level of 0.5–1% and produces mainly palmitic (~60%) and palmitoleic (35%) acids. S. elongatus cells that expressed foreign LPAAT synthesized myristic acid at 26%, but did not produce myristoleic acid, suggesting that Δ9-FAD of S. elongatus cannot desaturate FAs with chain lengths less than C16. Synechococcus cells that co-expressed LPAAT and Δ9-FAD of Cyanobacterium synthesized up to 45% palmitoleic and 9% myristoleic acid, suggesting that Δ9-FAD of Cyanobacterium is capable of desaturating saturated acyl chains of any length.