Generating Mammalian Sirtuin Tools for Protein-Interaction Analysis

The sirtuins are a family of NAD⁺ -dependent deacylases with important effects on aging, cancer, and metabolism. Sirtuins exert their biological effects by catalyzing deacetylation and/or deacylation reactions in which Acyl groups are removed from lysine residues of specific proteins. A current challenge is to identify specific sirtuin target proteins against the high background of acetylated proteins recently identified by proteomic surveys. New evidence indicates that bona fide sirtuin substrate proteins form stable physical associations with their sirtuin regulator. Therefore, identification of sirtuin interacting proteins could be a useful aid in focusing the search for substrates. Described here is a method for identifying sirtuin protein interactors. Employing basic techniques of molecular cloning and immunochemistry, the method describes the generation of mammalian sirtuin protein expression plasmids and their use to overexpress and immunoprecipitate sirtuins with their interacting partners. Also described is the use of the Database for Annotation, Visualization, and Integrated Discovery for interpreting the sirtuin protein-interaction data obtained.