ITHACA, N.Y. - The enzyme sirtuin 6, or SIRT6, serves many key biological functions in regulating genome stability, DNA repair, metabolism and longevity, but how its multiple enzyme activities relate to its various functions is poorly understood.
A team of Cornell University researchers, led by Hening Lin, professor of chemistry and chemical biology, has devised a method for isolating one specific enzyme activity to determine its contribution and lead to better overall understanding of SIRT6.
Their work, "Identifying the functional contribution of the defatty-acylase activity of SIRT6," was published June 20 in Nature Chemical Biology. Xiaoyu Zhang, graduate student in chemistry and chemical biology and a member of the Lin Group, was lead author.