Yamanaka strikes again. Citrulline is deiminated arginine, replacing a C=N-H (the imine) by a carbonyl C=O. An enzyme called PAD4 does the job. Why is it important? Because one of its targets is the H1 histone which links nucleosomes together. Recall that the total length of DNA in each and every one of our cells is 3 METERS. By wrapping the double helix around nucleosomes, the DNA is shortened by one order of magnitude.
So what? Well, at physiologic pH the imine probably binds another proton making it positively charged, making it bind to the negatively charged DNA phosphate backbone. Removing the imine makes this less likely to happen, so the linker doesn’t bind the double helix as tightly.
Duck soup for the chemist, but apparently no one had thought to look at this before.
This opens up the DNA (aka chromatin decondensation) for protein transcription. Why is Yamanaka involved? Because PAD4 is induced during cellular reprogramming to induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), activating the expression of key stem cell genes. Inhibition of PAD4 lowers the percentage of pluripotent stem cells, reducing reprogramming efficiency. The paper is Nature vol. 507 pp. 104 – 108 ’14.
Will this may be nice for forming iPSCs, it should be noted that PAD4 is unregulated in a variety of tumors.
Chemiotics II 