Carboxypeptidase active-site residues

Similar reaction mechanisms, involving general base and metal ion catalysis, in conjunction with an OH nucleophilic attack, have been proposed for thermolysin (Ref. 12) and carboxypeptidase A (Refs. 12 and 13). Both these enzymes use Zn2+ as their catalytic metal and they also have additional positively charged active site residues (His 231 in thermolysin and... 

The crystal structure of the HNL isolated from S. bicolor (SbHNL) was determined in a complex with the inhibitor benzoic acid." The folding pattern of SbHNL is similar to that of wheat serine carboxypeptidase (CP-WII)" and alcohol dehydrogenase." A unique two-amino acid deletion in SbHNL, however, is forcing the putative active site residues away from the hydrolase binding site toward a small hydrophobic cleft, thereby defining a completely different active site architecture where the triad of a carboxypeptidase is missing. 

Fig. 11. The slowly hydrolyzed substrate glycyl-L-tyrosine binds to carboxypeptidase A in a nonproductive complex where the amino-terminal glycine complexes the active-site ion (large sphere) to form a five-membered chelate, as in Fig. 10. Protein-bound zinc ligands Glu-72, His-69, and His-196 complete the coordinadon polyhedron of pentacoordinate zinc. Active-site residues are indicated by one-letter abbreviadons and sequence numbers E, glutamate H, hisddine R, arginine Y, tyrosine. [Reprinted with permission from Christianson, D. W., Lipscomb, W. N. (1986) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 83,7568-7572.]...

Fig. 30. Important active-site residues of carboxypeptidase A (CPA) and thermolysin (TLN) and a general scheme for the active sites of related zinc proteases.

Figure 5 Multiple sequence alignment of carboxypeptidases. Similarity of the enzymatically active subunit of human carboxypeptidase N (7) to carboxypeptidase A from bovine (1), rat (3), human mast cell (4), bovine carboxypeptidase B (2), human carboxypeptidase M (5), and bovine carboxypeptidase H (6). Residues identical and conservative changes in at least four proteins are boxed. Arrows indicate active site residues. (From N Refs. 119-123.)... 

If the comparison of Lewis acid catalysis vs general acid-base catalysis is extended to the specific examples of carboxypeptidase A and a-chymotrypsin, then it is interesting to note that the function of the carboxypeptidase active site catalytic residues (33, 34) appears to involve activation of the substrate for the chemical transformation primarily via Lewis acid catalysis (see Scheme III, Section IV). In contrast, the function of the a-chymotrypsin active site catalytic residues appears to involve the activation of the hydroxyl of Ser-195... 

The introduction of redox activity through a Co11 center in place of redox-inactive Zn11 can be revealing. Carboxypeptidase B (another Zn enzyme) and its Co-substituted derivative were oxidized by the active-site-selective m-chloroperbenzoic acid.1209 In the Co-substituted oxidized (Co111) enzyme there was a decrease in both the peptidase and the esterase activities, whereas in the zinc enzyme only the peptidase activity decreased. Oxidation of the native enzyme resulted in modification of a methionine residue instead. These studies indicate that the two metal ions impose different structural and functional properties on the active site, leading to differing reactivities of specific amino acid residues. Replacement of zinc(II) in the methyltransferase enzyme MT2-A by cobalt(II) yields an enzyme with enhanced activity, where spectroscopy also indicates coordination by two thiolates and two histidines, supported by EXAFS analysis of the zinc coordination sphere.1210... 

Nakagawa, S., and H. Umeyama. 1981. Molecular Orbital Study of the Effects of Ionic Amino Acid Residues on Proton Transfer Energetics in the Active Site of Carboxypeptidase A. Chem. Phys. Letters 81, 503-507. 

As mentioned earlier, by far the largest number of zinc enzymes are involved in hydrolytic reactions, frequently associated with peptide bond cleavage. Carboxypeptidases and ther-molysins are, respectively, exopeptidases, which remove amino acids from the carboxyl terminus of proteins, and endopeptidases, which cleave peptide bonds in the interior of a polypeptide chain. However, they both have almost identical active sites (Figure 12.4) with two His and one Glu ligands to the Zn2+. It appears that the Glu residue can be bound in a mono- or bi-dentate manner. The two classes of enzymes are expected to follow similar reaction mechanisms. 

This enzyme [EC 3.4.16.4], also known as serine-type D-alanyl-D-alanine carboxypeptidase, catalyzes the hydrolysis of D-alanyl-D-alanine to yield two D-alanine. This enzyme comprises a group of membrane-bound, bacterial enzymes of the peptidase family Sll. They are distinct from the zinc D-alanyl-D-alanine carboxypeptidase [EC 3.4.17.14]. The enzyme also hydrolyzes the D-alanyl-D-alanine peptide bond in the polypeptide of the cell wall. In addition, the enzyme will also catalyze the transpeptidation of peptidyl-alanyl moieties that are A-acetyl-substituents of D-alanine. The protein is inhibited by j8-lactam antibiotics, which acylate the active-site seryl residue. 

Zinc proteases carboxypeptidase A and thermolysin have been extensively studied in solution and in the crystal (for reviews, see Matthews, 1988 Christianson and Lipscomb, 1989). Both carboxypeptidase A and thermolysin hydrolyze the amide bond of polypeptide substrates, and each enzyme displays specificity toward substrates with large hydrophobic Pi side chains such as phenylalanine or leucine. The exopeptidase carboxypeptidase A has a molecular weight of about 35K and the structure of the native enzyme has been determined at 1.54 A resolution (Rees et ai, 1983). Residues in the active site which are important for catalysis are Glu-270, Arg-127, (liganded by His-69, His-196, and Glu-72 in bidentate fashion), and the zinc-bound water molecule (Fig. 30). 

Carboxypeptidase A"" (CPA, EC 3.4.17.1) is a proteolytic enzyme that cleaves C-terminal amino acid residues with hydrophobic side chains selectively. Several X-ray structures are available" The active site of CPA consists of a hydrophobic pocket (primary substrate recognition site) that is primarily responsible for the substrate specificity, a guanidinium moiety of Argl45 that forms hydrogen bonds to the carboxylate of the substrate, and Glu270, whose carboxylate plays a critical role, functioning either as a nucleophile to attack the scissUe carboxamide carbonyl carbon of the substrate or as a base to activate the zinc-bound water molecule, which in turn attacks the scissile peptide bond ". However, semiempirical calculations had shown that the direct attack of... 

The considerable detail to which we now can understand enzyme catalysis is well illustrated by what is known about the action of carboxypeptidase A. This enzyme (Section 25-7B and Table 25-3) is one of the digestive enzymes of the pancreas that specifically hydrolyze peptide bonds at the C-terminal end. Both the amino-acid sequence and the three-dimensional structure of carboxypeptidase A are known. The enzyme is a single chain of 307 amino-acid residues. The chain has regions where it is associated as an a helix and others where it is associated as a /3-pIeated sheet. The prosthetic group is a zinc ion bound to three specific amino acids and one water molecule near the surface of the molecule. The amino acids bound to zinc are His 69, His 196, and Glu 72 the numbering refers to the position of the amino acid along the chain, with the amino acid at the /V-terminus being number l. The zinc ion is essential for the activity of the enzyme and is implicated, therefore, as part of the active site. 

In the acylation step a nucleophilic group on one of the amino-acid side chains at the active site behaves as the nucleophile. As we have seen in Section 25-9B, the nucleophile of carboxypeptidase is the free carboxyl group of glutamic acid 270. In several other enzymes (chymotrypsin, subtilisin, trypsin, elastase, thrombin, acetylcholinesterase), it is the hydroxyl group of a serine residue ... 

Potts et al. 89) have shown that the 5 C-terminal residues of S-peptidfe can be removed with carboxypeptidase. The resulting derivative (residues 1-15) forms a strong complex with S-protein having full catalytic activity. It is clear from the X-ray structure that these 5 residues interact little, if at all, with any part of S-protein, and they are remote from the active site. The various changes produced in this component by synthesis and by chemical modifications are discussed later. 

The 2.0 A electron density map of carboxypeptidase A shows three zinc-protein contacts (91). The ligands have been identified as histidine-69, glutamic acid-72 and histidine-196 (91, 101), where the numbers indicate the positions of the residues in the sequence counted from the N-terminal end. The geometry of the complex is irregular but resembles a distorted tetrahedron with an open position directed towards the active site pocket, and presumably occupied by water in the resting enzyme (91). The similarity with the tentative structure of the metal-binding site in carbonic anhydrase is striking. 

By the use of a model system, Kimura et al. [17] tried to mimic the function of the two mechanistically most typical zinc(II) enzymes. Carbonic anhydrase (CA, EC 4.2.1.1) catalyses the reversible hydration of carbon dioxide to bicarbonate ion and its zinc(II) active site is bound to three histidine residues and a water molecule. Carboxypeptidase A (CPA, EC 3.4.17.1) catalyses the hydrolysis of the hydrophobic C-terminal amino acids from polypeptides, and its active-site zinc(II) is bound to two histidine residues, a glutamine residue and a water molecule which is hydrogen bound to a glutamine residue (Scheme 19). 

The action of p-lactam antibiotics is considered to be due to the formation of an acyl enzyme with carboxypeptidases and transpeptidases which are involved in the biosynthesis of bacterial cell walls38). A three-step mechanism involving a stable acyl-enzyme intermediate (El ), a participating active site serine residue, and a very slow decay process (k4.) was proposed [Eq. (9)]59). 

Requirements of Active Sites in Enzymes Carboxypeptidase, which sequentially removes carboxyl-terminal amino acid residues from its peptide substrates, is a single polypeptide of 307 amino acids. The two essential catalytic groups in the active site are furnished by Arg145 and Glu270. 

The N-hydroxy amino acid derivatives are likely to be applicable to other metalloproteases. Thermolysin is inhibited irreversibly at pH 7.2 by ClCH2CO-DL-HOLeu-OCH3 where HOLeu is N-hydroxyleucine (47). The inhibition reaction involves coordination of the hydroxamic acid functional group to the active-site zinc atom of the enzyme. This then places the chloroacetyl group adjacent to Glu-143, an essential catalytic residue of thermolysin (see Figure 9). An ester linkage is formed and the enzyme is inactivated irreversibly. This reagent also inactivated two neutral metalloproteases from B. subtilis, but reacted only very slowly with carboxypeptidase A (t1/2 > 3 d). 

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