The Deubiquitinating Enzymes

In the mid-1970s ubiquitin was found to be a covalent modifier of proteins [1]. At the time, it was quite surprising to find a protein that covalently modified another protein. Since then, the reversible covalent modification of proteins by other proteins is known to be commonplace and ubiquitin is used to covalently modify hundreds of proteins, often for the purpose of targeting them to the proteasome for degradation. 

Activity peptidase ylating yhting ylating ylating 

Soon after it was shown that ubiquitin is conjugated to proteins, it was determined that this was a reversible process and deubiquitinating enzymes, or DUBs, could remove ubiquitin from ubiquitinated proteins [18, 19]. As the genes for ubiquitin and ubiquitin-like proteins were identified it became clear that all ubiquitin family members were synthesized as proproteins and processed to reveal the C-terminal glycylglycine of the active proteins [20]. Based on this information, DUBs were defined as proteases that cleave at the C-terminus of ubiquitin or ubiquitin-like proteins to reverse conjugation to target proteins and also process the proproteins. 

The study of DUBs has moved at a rapid rate since their initial discovery in the early 1980s. Yet despite all the progress, the total number of DUBs and the substrate specificity of most DUBs are still undetermined. The discovery of novel DUB families including the JAMM isopeptidases and OTU DUBs has highlighted that there may be still more unidentified DUBs. Because of the large number of 

DUB Organism Deletion/knockdown phenotype Functional role 

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Borodovsky, A., OvAA, H., Kolli, N., Gan-Erdene, T., Wilkinson, K. D., Ploegh, H. L., and Kessler, B. M. Chemistry-based functional proteomics reveals novel members of the deubiquitinating enzyme family, Chem Biol,... 

Figure 7 Multiple roles of the deubiquitinating enzymes. Deubiquitinating enzymes (DUBs) of the UCH type (dark scissors) process ubiquitin precursors. UCH-L1 generates monoubiquitins from tandemly linked ubiquitin gene product. UCH-L3 acts on ubiquitin synthesized as a protein fused to small ribosomal subunits. DUBs of the UBP type (shaded scissors) process ubiquitins linked in isopeptide linkage in polyubiquitin chains. DUBs also reverse the ubiquitination on erroneously targeted substrates (editing). Another important function of DUBs is disassembly of polyubiquitin chains as the ubiquitinated substrate is degraded. Ubiquitin attached to substrates after activation are indicated as lollipop-like structures with filled circles. Free ubiquitin or ubiquitin unit in precursor is shown with open circles.

Chemistry-based functional proteomics reveals novel members of the deubiquitinating enzyme family, Chem. Biol. 2002, 9, 1149. 

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