(A) Increasing amounts of purified VPA0226WT or catalytically inactive S/A version were incubated with the fluorogenic PLA2-specific substrate BODIPY PC-A2 (EnzCheck Phospholipase A2 Assay kit, Invitrogen) for 30 min at RT and fluorescence was measured at Ex/Em 460/515 nm. Error bars represent standard deviation from the mean. Asterisks represent statistical significance (*=p < 0.05, ***=p < 0.0005) using one-way ANOVA and Turkey’s multiple comparison test. (B) Thin layer chromatography of lipids extracted from the liposome assay demonstrating the formation of esterified cholesterol in reactions containing cardiolipin (CL) and cholesterol liposomes incubated with wildtype VPA0226 (lane 4). For standards, 10 µg each of CL, cholesterol and cholesteryl ester were loaded on TLC plate (lanes 6, 7 and 8, respectively). (C) CLANS graph depicts sequence similarity relationships between GDSL lipases, by clustering protein sequences according to pairwise BLAST-derived scores. 1500 representative sequences of representatives of the Lipase_GDSL family shown. Coloring by taxonomy: Vibrio – dark blue, Salmonella – orange, other bacteria – cyan, fungi – brown, plants – green, animals – yellow, amoebas – magenta.