Pirin regulates pyruvate catabolism by interacting with the pyruvate dehydrogenase E1 subunit and modulating pyruvate dehydrogenase activity

The protein pirin, which is involved in a variety of biological processes, is conserved from prokaryotic microorganisms, fungi, and plants to mammals. It acts as a transcriptional cofactor or an apoptosis-related protein in mammals and is involved in seed germination and seedling development in plants. In prokaryotes, while pirin is stress induced in cyanobacteria and may act as a quercetinase in Escherichia coli, the functions of pirin orthologs remain mostly uncharacterized. We show that the Serratia marcescens pirin (pirin _Sm) gene encodes an ortholog of pirin protein. Protein pull-down and bacterial two-hybrid assays followed by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and electrospray ionization-tandem mass spectrometry analyses showed the pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH) E1 subunit as a component interacting with the pirin_Sm gene. Functional analyses showed that both PDH E1 subunit activity and PDH enzyme complex activity are inhibited by the pirin_Sm gene in S. marcescens CH-1. The S. marcescens CH-1 pirin_Sm gene was subsequently mutated by insertion-deletion homologous recombination. Accordingly, the PDH E1 and PDH enzyme complex activities and cellular ATP concentration increased up to 250%, 140%, and 220%, respectively, in the S. marcescens CH-1 pirin_Sm mutant. Concomitantly, the cellular NADH/NAD⁺ ratio increased in the pirin_Sm mutant, indicating increased tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle activity. Our results show that the pirin_Sm gene plays a regulatory role in the process of pyruvate catabolism to acetyl coenzyme A through interaction with the PDH E1 subunit and inhibiting PDH enzyme complex activity in S. marcescens CH-1, and they suggest that pirin_Sm is an important protein involved in determining the direction of pyruvate metabolism towards either the TCA cycle or the fermentation pathways.