Lactacystin is an

organic compound In chemistry, organic compounds are generally any chemical compounds that contain carbon- hydrogen or carbon-carbon bonds. Due to carbon's ability to catenate (form chains with other carbon atoms), millions of organic compounds are known. Th ...

naturally synthesized by

bacteria Bacteria (; singular: bacterium) are ubiquitous, mostly free-living organisms often consisting of one biological cell. They constitute a large domain of prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in length, bacteria were am ...

of the

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial n ...

Streptomyces ''Streptomyces'' is the largest genus of Actinomycetota and the type genus of the family Streptomycetaceae. Over 500 species of ''Streptomyces'' bacteria have been described. As with the other Actinomycetota, streptomycetes are gram-positive, ...

'' first identified as an inducer of neuritogenesis in neuroblastoma cells in 1991.Omura S, Fujimoto T, Otoguro K, Matsuzaki K, Moriguchi R, Tanaka H, Sasaki Y. (1991). Lactacystin, a novel microbial metabolite, induces neuritogenesis of neuroblastoma cells: S. Omura, et al. ''J. Antibiot.'' 44(1):113-6. The target of lactacystin was subsequently found to be the

proteasome Proteasomes are protein complexes which degrade unneeded or damaged proteins by proteolysis, a chemical reaction that breaks peptide bonds. Enzymes that help such reactions are called proteases. Proteasomes are part of a major mechanism by whi ...

on the basis of its affinity for certain catalytic subunits of the proteasome by Fenteany and co-workers in 1995. The proteasome is a protein complex responsible for the bulk of proteolysis in the cell, as well as proteolytic activation of certain protein substrates. Lactacystin was the first non-peptidic proteasome inhibitor discovered and is widely used as a research tool in biochemistry and cell biology. The transformation product of lactacystin clasto-lactacystin β-lactone (also known as omuralide) covalently modifies the amino-terminal threonine of specific catalytic subunits of the proteasome, a discovery that helped to establish the proteasome as a mechanistically novel class of protease: an amino-terminal threonine protease. The molecule is commonly used as in

biochemistry Biochemistry or biological chemistry is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology ...

and

cell biology Cell biology (also cellular biology or cytology) is a branch of biology that studies the structure, function, and behavior of cells. All living organisms are made of cells. A cell is the basic unit of life that is responsible for the living a ...

laboratories as a selective inhibitor of the

. The first

total synthesis Total synthesis is the complete chemical synthesis of a complex molecule, often a natural product, from simple, commercially-available precursors. It usually refers to a process not involving the aid of biological processes, which distinguishes i ...

of lactacystin was developed in 1992 by Corey and Reichard,''"Total Synthesis of Lactacystin"'' Corey, E. J.; Reichard, G. A. '' J. Am. Chem. Soc.'' 1992, ''114'', 10677. and a number of other syntheses of this molecule have also been published. There are more than 1,660 entries for lactacystin in

PubMed PubMed is a free search engine accessing primarily the MEDLINE database of references and abstracts on life sciences and biomedical topics. The United States National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institutes of Health maintain ...

as of January 2019.

References

{{Reflist Acetamides Pyrrolidones Secondary alcohols Total synthesis Lactams

See also

References