N-Acylethanolamine Acid Amidase (NAAA)

The deduced 359-amino acid protein contains a hydrophobic signal peptide, 4 potential N-myristoylation sites, 5 putative N-glycosylation sites, and several possible phosphorylation sites.ASAHL and ASAH share 33% amino acid identity. Northern blot analysis revealed a major ASAHL transcript of about 2 kb and minor transcripts of about 2.6, 5.8, and 8.2 kb; the 2.6-kb transcript may have represented cross-hybridization with ASAH. Expression was detected in all tissues tested, with highest expression in liver and kidney, intermediate expression in pancreas, and low expression in lung, heart, brain, and skeletal muscle. Fluorescence-tagged ASAHL, expressed in COS-1 cells, showed a punctate perinuclear distribution that colocalized with lysosomal acid phosphatase.