Abstract S-acylation is the addition of a fatty acid to a cysteine residue of a protein. While this modification may profoundly alter protein behaviour, its effects on the function of plant proteins remains poorly characterised, largely as a result to the lack of basic information regarding which proteins are S-acylated and where in the proteins the modification occurs. In order to address this gap in our knowledge, we have performed a comprehensive analysis of plant protein S-acylation from 6 separate tissues. In our highest confidence group, we identified 5185 cysteines modified by S-acylation, which were located in 4891 unique peptides from 2643 different proteins. This represents around 9% of the entire Arabidopsis proteome and suggests an important role for S-acylation in many essential cellular functions including trafficking, signalling and metabolism. To illustrate the potential of this dataset, we focus on cellulose synthesis and confirm for the first time the S-acylation of all proteins known to be involved in cellulose synthesis and trafficking of the cellulose synthase complex. In the secondary cell walls, cellulose synthesis requires three different catalytic subunits (CESA4, CESA7 and CESA8) that all exhibit striking sequence similarity. While all three proteins have been widely predicted to possess a RING-type zinc finger at their N-terminus, for CESA4 and CESA8, we find evidence for S-acylation of cysteines in this region that is incompatible with any role in coordinating metal ions. We show that while CESA7 may possess a RING type domain, the same region of CESA4 and CESA8 appear to have evolved a very different structure. Together, the data suggests this study represents an atlas of S-acylation in Arabidopsis that will facilitate the broader study of this elusive post-translational modification in plants as well as demonstrates the importance of undertaking further work in this area.

An atlas of Arabidopsis protein S-Acylation reveals its widespread role in plant cell organisation of and function