New publication in "J. Mol. Biol."

New Publication in "J. Mol. Biol."

RomA is a bacterial protein lysine methyltransferase from Legionella pneumophila. It is essential for infection of human cells and methylates histone H3 at lysine 14. In this paper we have investigated the substrate specificity of RomA for the first itme showing that it recognizes a G-K-X-(PA) sequence embedded in a basic amino acid sequence context. Based on this we identified additional human proteins which are methylated by RomA during infection. Our data show that the bacterial methyltransferase RomA methylates also human non-histone proteins suggesting a multifaceted role in the infection process.