Abstract:
Serine hydrolases are one of the largest family of enzymes known to play a major role in many of the patho-physiological processes. ABHD12, a major brain lyso-PS lipase, belongs to the same family of proteins, are seen to prefer very long chain (VLC) lipids as their substrates in in vitro and endogenous experiments. At the same time the (S)- configuration of these lipids do not show any activity with this enzyme. From the identification of ABHD12, which is associated with a disease PHARC, and Bio-GPS data it was hypothesised that there may exist more lyso-PS lipases in other metabolic tissues. With this lead in hand we tested several metabolic tissues in the human body. From my studies, I could show that there are indeed lyso-PS lipases present in the membrane fraction of these tissue lysates which needs to be identified (annotated if necessary) and studied. As serine hydrolases are a major drug target in many diseases, identification and characterisation of new lipases will help in finding if there are diseases associated with these proteins.
