Phospho ADP-Ribosylation and Phospho Adenylation of Proteins

Abstract

In 1941 the late Fritz Lipmann formulated his now famous concept of energy-rich bonds (1). Although he developed his thesis for phosphate compounds, it has proven extremely fruitful in other areas as well. When looking through his eyes at the structure of pyridine nucleotides, we see two activated groups (Fig. 1): Active ADP-ribose and active AMP in NAD, and the corresponding groups in NADP as well, but extended by a 2’-phosphate residue. Recognition of NAD as a group transferring coenzyme dates back to the mid 1960’s when poly(ADP-ribose) was detected by Chambon et al. (3), Nishizuka et al. (4) and Sugimura et al. (5), and when Olivera and Lehman reported the use of NAD by bacterial DNA ligase to reseal DNA breaks (2). Although it seems reasonable to assume that analogous reactions exist for NADP as well, no group transfer from NADP to acceptor proteins has been described so far.