scholarly journals Purification of Escherichia coli acetohydroxyacid synthase isoenzyme II and reconstitution of active enzyme from its individual pure subunits

1997 ◽  
Vol 327 (3) ◽  
pp. 891-898 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Craig HILL ◽  
Siew Siew PANG ◽  
G. Ronald DUGGLEBY

The first step in the biosynthesis of branched-chain amino acids is catalysed by acetohydroxyacid synthase (EC 4.1.3.18). The reaction involves the decarboxylation of pyruvate followed by condensation with either a second molecule of pyruvate or with 2-oxobutyrate. The enzyme requires as cofactors thiamine diphosphate, a divalent metal ion and, usually, FAD. In most bacteria the enzyme is a heterotetramer of two large and two small subunits. Escherichia coli contains three active isoenzymes and the present study concerns isoenzyme II, whose large and small subunits are encoded by the ilvG and ilvM genes respectively. Cloning these genes into a plasmid vector and overexpression in E. coli allowed a two-step purification procedure for the native enzyme to be developed. The level of expression is considerably higher from a vector that introduces a 50 residue N-terminal fusion containing an oligohistidine sequence on the large subunit. Purification to homogeneity was achieved in a single step by immobilized-metal-affinity chromatography. The kinetic properties of the native and fusion enzyme are indistinguishable with respect to the substrate pyruvate and the inhibitor chlorsulfuron. The individual subunits were expressed as oligohistidine-tagged fusion proteins and each was purified in a single step. Neither subunit alone has significant enzymic activity but, on mixing, the enzyme is reconstituted. The kinetic properties of the reconstituted enzyme are very similar to those of the fusion enzyme. It is proposed that the reconstitution pathway involves successive, and highly co-operative, binding of two small subunit monomers to a large subunit dimer. None of the cofactors is needed for subunit association although they are necessary for the restoration of enzymic activity.

1998 ◽  
Vol 335 (3) ◽  
pp. 653-661 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig M. HILL ◽  
Ronald G. DUGGLEBY

Sulphonylurea and imidazolinone herbicides act by inhibiting acetohydroxyacid synthase (AHAS; EC 4.1.3.18), the enzyme that catalyses the first step in the biosynthesis of branched-chain amino acids. AHAS requires as cofactors thiamin diphosphate, a bivalent metal ion and, usually, FAD. Escherichia coli contains three isoenzymes and this study concerns isoenzyme II, the most herbicide-sensitive of the E. coli forms. A plasmid containing the large and small subunit genes of AHAS II was mutagenized using hydroxylamine and clones resistant to the sulphonylurea chlorimuron ethyl were selected. Three mutants were isolated; A26V, V99M and A108V. A26V has been described previously whereas the equivalent mutation of A108V has been reported in a herbicide-insensitive variant of yeast AHAS. The V99M mutation has not been discovered previously in AHAS from any source. The mutants were each over-expressed in E. coli, and the enzymes were purified to homogeneity. Some differences from wild type in the kinetic properties (kcat, Km and cofactor affinities) were observed, most notably a 28-fold decrease in the affinity for thiamin diphosphate of V99M. None of the mutants shows marked changes from the wild type in sensitivity to three imidazolinones, with the largest increase in the apparent inhibition constant being a factor of approximately 5. The A26V mutant is weakly resistant (6- to 20-fold) to six sulphonylureas, whereas stronger resistance is seen in V99M (20- to 250-fold) and A108V (35- to 420-fold). Resistance as a result of these mutations is consistent with a molecular model of the herbicide-binding site, which predicts that mutation of G249 might also confer herbicide insensitivity. Three G249 mutants were constructed, expressed and purified but all are inactive, apparently because they cannot bind FAD.


1999 ◽  
Vol 181 (13) ◽  
pp. 3935-3941 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kempton M. Horken ◽  
F. Robert Tabita

ABSTRACT Form I ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (RubisCO) of the Calvin-Benson-Bassham cycle may be divided into two broad phylogenetic groups, referred to as red-like and green-like, based on deduced large subunit amino acid sequences. Unlike the form I enzyme from the closely related organism Rhodobacter sphaeroides, the form I RubisCO from R. capsulatus is a member of the green-like group and closely resembles the enzyme from certain chemoautotrophic proteobacteria and cyanobacteria. As the enzymatic properties of this type of RubisCO have not been well studied in a system that offers facile genetic manipulation, we purified theR. capsulatus form I enzyme and determined its basic kinetic properties. The enzyme exhibited an extremely low substrate specificity factor, which is congruent with its previously determined sequence similarity to form I enzymes from chemoautotrophs and cyanobacteria. The enzymological results reported here are thus strongly supportive of the previously suggested horizontal gene transfer that most likely occurred between a green-like RubisCO-containing bacterium and a predecessor to R. capsulatus. Expression results from hybrid and chimeric enzyme plasmid constructs, made with large and small subunit genes fromR. capsulatus and R. sphaeroides, also supported the unrelatedness of these two enzymes and were consistent with the recently proposed phylogenetic placement of R. capsulatus form I RubisCO. The R. capsulatus form I enzyme was found to be subject to a time-dependent fallover in activity and possessed a high affinity for CO2, unlike the closely similar cyanobacterial RubisCO, which does not exhibit fallover and possesses an extremely low affinity for CO2. These latter results suggest definite approaches to elucidate the molecular basis for fallover and CO2 affinity.


2008 ◽  
Vol 414 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver Mueller-Cajar ◽  
Spencer M. Whitney

The photosynthetic CO2-fixing enzyme Rubisco [ribulose-P2 (D-ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate) carboxylase/oxygenase] has long been a target for engineering kinetic improvements. Towards this goal we used an RDE (Rubisco-dependent Escherichia coli) selection system to evolve Synechococcus PCC6301 Form I Rubisco under different selection pressures. In the fastest growing colonies, the Rubisco L (large) subunit substitutions I174V, Q212L, M262T, F345L or F345I were repeatedly selected and shown to increase functional Rubisco expression 4- to 7-fold in the RDE and 5- to 17-fold when expressed in XL1-Blue E. coli. Introducing the F345I L-subunit substitution into Synechococcus PCC7002 Rubisco improved its functional expression 11-fold in XL1-Blue cells but could not elicit functional Arabidopsis Rubisco expression in the bacterium. The L subunit substitutions L161M and M169L were complementary in improving Rubisco yield 11-fold, whereas individually they improved yield ∼5-fold. In XL1-Blue cells, additional GroE chaperonin enhanced expression of the I174V, Q212L and M262T mutant Rubiscos but engendered little change in the yield of the more assembly-competent F345I or F345L mutants. In contrast, the Rubisco chaperone RbcX stimulated functional assembly of wild-type and mutant Rubiscos. The kinetic properties of the mutated Rubiscos varied with noticeable reductions in carboxylation and oxygenation efficiency accompanying the Q212L mutation and a 2-fold increase in Kribulose-P2 (KM for the substrate ribulose-P2) for the F345L mutant, which was contrary to the ∼30% reductions in Kribulose-P2 for the other mutants. These results confirm the RDE systems versatility for identifying mutations that improve functional Rubisco expression in E. coli and provide an impetus for developing the system to screen for kinetic improvements.


2001 ◽  
Vol 356 (1) ◽  
pp. 223-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen L. BEARNE ◽  
Omid HEKMAT ◽  
Jennifer E. MacDONNELL

Cytidine 5′-triphosphate synthase catalyses the ATP-dependent formation of CTP from UTP with either ammonia or glutamine as the source of nitrogen. When glutamine is the substrate, GTP is required as an allosteric effector to promote catalysis. Escherichia coli CTP synthase, overexpressed as a hexahistidine-tagged form, was purified to high specific activity with the use of metal-ion-affinity chromatography. Unfused CTP synthase, generated by the enzymic removal of the hexahistidine tag, displayed an activity identical with that of the purified native enzyme and was used to study the effect of GTP on the inhibition of enzymic activity by glutamate γ-semialdehyde. Glutamate γ-semialdehyde is expected to inhibit CTP synthase by reacting reversibly with the active-site Cys-379 to form an analogue of a tetrahedral intermediate in glutamine hydrolysis. Indeed, glutamate γ-semialdehyde is a potent linear mixed-type inhibitor of CTP synthase with respect to glutamine (Kis 0.16±0.03mM; Kii 0.4±0.1mM) and a competitive inhibitor with respect to ammonia (Ki 0.39±0.06mM) in the presence of GTP at pH8.0. The mutant enzyme (C379A), which is fully active with ammonia but has no glutamine-dependent activity, is not inhibited by glutamate γ-semialdehyde. Although glutamate γ-semialdehyde exists in solution primarily in its cyclic form, Δ1-pyrroline-5-carboxylate, the variation of inhibition with pH, and the weak inhibition by cyclic analogues of Δ1-pyrroline-5-carboxylate (l-proline, l-2-pyrrolidone and pyrrole-2-carboxylate) confirm that the rare open-chain aldehyde species causes the inhibition. When ammonia is employed as the substrate in the absence of GTP, the enzyme's affinity for glutamate γ-semialdehyde is decreased approx. 10-fold, indicating that the allosteric effector, GTP, functions by stabilizing the protein conformation that binds the tetrahedral intermediate(s) formed during glutamine hydrolysis.


2008 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pawel Wisniewski ◽  
Adam Master ◽  
Bozena Kaminska

This report presents purification and characterization of the extracellular domain of rat Fas protein, called FIP (FasL interfering protein), expressed as inclusion bodies in Escherichia coli. FIP was extracted from the inclusion bodies, solubilized with 8 M urea, purified by a single-step immobilized metal ion (Ni(2+)) affinity chromatography and refolded. SDS/PAGE and mass spectrometry analysis of the purified protein verified its purity. Fluorescence spectrum analysis showed that the refolding procedure caused structural changes which presumably might have led to oligomerization. The purified FIP has biological activities: it binds specifically soluble Fas ligand and protects human Jurkat lymphocytes against FasL-dependent apoptosis. This efficient procedure of FIP expression in E. coli and renaturation may be useful for production of therapeutically important proteins.


1995 ◽  
Vol 312 (3) ◽  
pp. 971-977 ◽  
Author(s):  
S Krishnan ◽  
B G Hall ◽  
M L Sinnott

The kinetics of hydrolysis of a series of synthetic substrates by two experimentally evolved forms (‘evolvants’), ebgabcd and ebgabcde, of the second beta-galactosidase of Escherichia coli have been measured. The ebgabcd enzyme differs from the wild-type (ebgo) enzyme by Asp92-->Asn (a) and Trp977-->Cys (b) changes in the large subunit, as well as two changes hitherto considered to have no kinetic effect, Ser979-->Gly in the large subunit (c) and Glu122-->Gly in the small subunit (d). The enzyme ebgabcde contains in addition a Glu93-->Lys change in the large subunit (e). Comparison of ebgabcd with ebgab [Elliott, K, Sinnott, Smith, Bommuswamy, Guo, Hall and Zhang (1992) Biochem. J. 282, 155-164] indicates that the c and d changes in fact accelerate the hydrolysis of the glycosyl-enzyme intermediate by a factor of 2.5, and also decrease the charge on the aglycone oxygen atom at the first transition state; the charge on the glycone, however, is unaltered [see K, Konstantinidis, Sinnott and Hall (1993) Biochem. J. 291, 15-17]. The e mutation causes a fall in the degalactosylation rate of about a factor of 3, and its occurrence only together with c and d mutations [Hall, Betts and Wootton (1989) Genetics 123, 635-648] suggests that degalactosylation of a hypothetical ebgabe enzyme would be so slow that the enzyme would have no biological advantage over the ancestral ebgab. The transfer products from galactosyl-ebgabcd and galactosyl-ebgabcde to high concentrations to glucose have been measured; the predominant product is allolactose, but significant quantities of lactose are also formed; however, at apparent kinetic saturation of the galactosyl-enzyme, hydrolysis rather than transfer is the preponderant pathway. A knowledge of the rates of enzyme-catalysed exchange of 18O from [1-18O]galactose to water permits the construction of the free-energy profiles for hydrolysis of lactose by begabcd and ebgabcde. As with the other evolvants, changes in the profile away from the rate-determining transition state are essentially random, and there is no correlation between the changes in the free energies of intermediates and of their flanking transition states. We consider the aggregate of our kinetic data on the ebg system to be telling experimental support for the theoretical objections of Pettersson [Pettersson (1992) Eur. J. Biochem. 206, 289-295 and previous papers] to the Albery-Knowles theory of the evolution of enzyme kinetic activity.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Myat T. Lin ◽  
William D. Stone ◽  
Vishal Chaudhari ◽  
Maureen R. Hanson

AbstractRubisco catalyzes the first step in carbon fixation and has been a strategic target to improve photosynthetic efficiency. In plants, Rubisco is a complex made up of eight large subunits encoded by a chloroplast gene, rbcL, and eight small subunits expressed from a nuclear gene family and targeted to chloroplast stroma. Biogenesis of Rubisco in plants requires a chaperonin system composed of Cpn60α, Cpn60β and Cpn20, which helps fold the large subunit, and multiple chaperones including RbcX, Raf1, Raf2 and BSD2, which help the dimerization of the folded large subunits and subsequent assembly with the small subunits into L8S8 holoenzymes. A recent study successfully assembled functional Arabidopsis Rubisco in Escherichia coli by co-expressing the two subunits with Arabidopsis chaperonins and chaperones (Aigner et al., 2017). In this study, we modified the expression vectors used in that study and adapted them to express tobacco Rubisco by replacing the Arabidopsis genes with tobacco ones. Next, we surveyed the small subunits present in tobacco, co-expressed each with the large subunit and successfully produced active tobacco enzymes composed of different small subunits in E. coli. These enzymes produced in E. coli have carboxylation kinetics very similar to that of the native tobacco Rubisco. We also produced tobacco Rubisco with a recently discovered trichome small subunit in E. coli and found that it has a higher catalytic rate and a lower CO2 affinity compared to the enzymes with other small subunits. Our improvements in the E. coli Rubisco expression system will allow us to probe features of both the chloroplast and nuclear-encoded subunits of Rubisco that affect its catalytic rate and CO2 specificity.


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