Escherichia coli YigI is a Conserved Gammaproteobacterial Acyl-CoA Thioesterase Permitting Metabolism of Unusual Fatty Acid Substrates

Abstract

Previous research has shown that long chain acyl-CoA thioesterases are needed for E. coli to grow in the presence of carbon sources such as conjugated linoleic acid, but that E. coli must possess at least one such enzyme that had not previously been characterized. Building off structure-guided function predictions, we showed that the poorly annotated protein YigI is indeed the previously unidentified third acyl CoA thioesterase.