found Cys15 had the highest S-palmitoylation score. Surprisingly, Cys15 is a consensus amino acid site among species (Figure 4B). Such conservation indicates that Cys15 may serve a critical biological function. Taken together, the S-palmitoylation of Cys15 may serve as a potential mechanism to explain the function of aa 1-26 in the INCENP protein sequence. We suggest that the function of ZDHHC5 to promote cell proliferation is achieved by regulating the palmitoylation status of its substrate. INCENP protein is a potential substrate of ZDHHC5. In our study, RNA-seq data showed that INCENP was upregulated in LUAD cell line of A549, compared to HBEC3 (Figure 3C). The IHC staining intensity and density of INCENP protein in NSCLC tissues (n = 104) were significantly higher than those in paired adjacent normal lung tissues (Xia et al., 2015). Therefore, due to the low expression level of INCENP in HBEC3, the decline of palmitoylation has no significant effect on cell proliferation.
