Prenylation: From bacteria to eukaryotes

For their protection from host cell immune defense, intracellular eukaryotic parasites developed a variety of mechanisms, including secretion systems III and IV which inject bacterial effectors directly into eukaryotic cells. These effectors may be posttranslational modified by host cell machinery and may function inside the host cell. Recently, to the list of possible posttranslational modifications of bacterial proteins the prenylation was added. In this work we describe current state of the knowledge about the prenylation of eukaryotic and prokaryotic proteins and its inhibitors. The bioinformatics analyses suggest possibility of prenylation for a number of Francisella genus proteins.