Ubiquitin-like proteins and their Chinese nomenclatures

Protein modifications by ubiquitin or ubiquitin-like proteins play critical roles in almost all cellular activities, such as protein degradation, autophagy, transcription, DNA repair and immune responses. With increasing population of Chinese scientists working on ubiquitin and ubiquitin-like proteins, it is quite inconvenient that there is no Chinese translation for ubiquitin-like proteins, such as Nedd8, SUMO and Atg8/LC3. Few of us discussed this pressing issue, and brought it to the editorial board meeting in Suzhou on April 9, 2018 during the group revision of a comprehensive and specialized book in Chinese, entitled 'Ubiquitin family-mediated proteolysis and autophagy'. It was unanimously agreed that an official Chinese translation is much needed among the board members and attendees of the Cold Spring Harbor Asia meeting in Ubiquitin Family, Autophagy and Diseases (held on April 9-13, 2018 in Suzhou). Inspired by the perfect translation of ubiquitin with '' ('Fan Su' in Chinese pronunciation) in Chinese meaning ubiquitous element, the following Chinese nomenclatures have been proposed for 10 types of ubiquitin-like proteins (related to 18 ubiquitin-like proteins): Nedd8- ('Ni Su', mimicking English pronunciation with a meaning of similarity in Chinese), SUMO- ('Xiang Su', analogue to Japanese Sumo game with a meaning of similarity in Chinese), Fub1-('Fang Su', with a meaning of imitating in Chinese and the pronunciation starts with F), Atg12- ('Chu Su', analogue to ATG as an initiation code for protein translation with a meaning of initializing in Chinese), Atg8- ('Shi Su', analogue to ATG as an initiation code for protein translation with a meaning of starting in Chinese), Ufm1- ('You Su', with a meaning of similarity in Chinese and the pronunciation similar to U), Urm1- ('Mo Su', with a meaning of mimicking in Chinese and the pronunciation starts with M), ISG15- ('Rao Su', interference in Chinese), FAT10- ('Fei Su', translation of 'fat' to Chinese), and Pup- ('Yuan Su', for Prokaryotic Ubiquitin-Like Protein starting with the first character of prokaryotic in Chinese). Ubiquitin is a highly conserved polypeptide with 76 amino acids, and covalently binds to an amino group of its substrate proteins in a process called ubiquitination. In addition, there are 10 types of ubiquitin-like proteins (UBL) in the ubiquitin family. Except the prokaryotic ubiquitin-like protein (Pup), all mammalian ubiquitin-like proteins share a similar structure, namely β-grasp fold, and employ similar enzymes to catalyze protein modifications. This paper summarizes the structures of all ubiquitin-like proteins and the enzymes involved in the protein modifications by them, and compares their cellular functions. © 2018, Science Press. All right reserved.