Substrate flavoprotein oxidase

Flavins are very versatile redox coenzymes. Flavopro-teins are dehydrogenases, oxidases, and oxygenases that catalyze a variety of reactions on an equal variety of substrate types. Since these classes of enzymes do not consist exclusively of flavoproteins, it is difficult to define catalytic specificity for flavins. Biological electron acceptors and donors in flavin-mediated reactions can be two-electron acceptors, such as NAD+ or NADP+, or a variety of one-electron acceptor systems, such as cytochromes (Fe2+/ Fe3+) and quinones, and molecular oxygen is an electron acceptor for flavoprotein oxidases as well as the source of oxygen for oxygenases. The only obviously common aspect of flavin-dependent reactions is that all are redox reactions. 

The expected result was obtained since n-amino acid oxidase converted )8-chloroalanine to pyruvate under anaerobic conditions, to chloropyruvate at high O2 concentrations, and to mixtures of these at intermediate O2 concentrations. Under steady state conditions, the reaction behaved as if cleavage of the a C-H bond were the rate-limiting process in turnover, although stopped-flow spectrophotometric measurements showed that this interpretation can not be entirely correct in this case (53) or in the case of )8-choloro-a-aminobutyrate (54), a-yS-Elimination has now been observed in three flavoprotein oxidase reactions (54) and can be considered strong circumstantial evidence for a-proton removal from compounds which closely resemble the physiological substrates. 

In sharp contrast to the reductive half-reaction, where the free oxidized flavin is totally inert in the presence of physiological substrates, reduced model flavins are appreciably reactive (nonenzymatically) with O2 and other electron acceptors. However, the O2 reactivity of reduced flavin is complicated for two perhaps related reasons (61). First, the reaction is autocatalytic owing to the formation of 2F (from F and FH2) which in its anionic state is extremely reactive with Oo. Second, the superoxide radical is an important kinetic intermediate in O2 reduction (59). Neither of these features is observed with the reduced flavoprotein oxidases. 

Flavoprotein oxidases catalyze the conversion of a substrate single bond to a double bond. They differ from flavoprotein dehydrogenases in that the reduced flavin is reoxidized by... 

DAAO is one of the most extensively studied flavoprotein oxidases. The homodimeric enzyme catalyzes the strictly stere-ospecihc oxidative deamination of neutral and hydrophobic D-amino acids to give a-keto acids and ammonia (Fig. 3a). In the reductive half-reaction the D-amino acid substrate is converted to the imino acid product via hydride transfer (21). During the oxidative half-reaction, the imino acid is released and hydrolyzed. Mammalian and yeast DAAO share the same catalytic mechanism, but they differ in kinetic mechanism, catalytic efficiency, substrate specificity, and protein stability. The dimeric structures of the mammalian enzymes show a head-to-head mode of monomer-monomer interaction, which is different from the head-to-tail mode of dimerization observed in Rhodotorula gracilis DAAO (20). Benzoate is a potent competitive inhibitor of mammalian DAAO. Binding of this ligand strengthens the apoenzyme-flavin interaction and increases the conformational stability of the porcine enzyme. 

Many of the amino acids originally tested by Krebs were racemic mixtures. When naturally occurring L-amino acids became available the oxidase was found to be sterically restricted to the unnatural, D series. [D-serine occurs in worms free and as D-phosphoryl lombricine (Ennor, 1959)]. It could not therefore be the enzyme used in the liver to release NH3 in amino acid metabolism. D-amino acid oxidase was shown by Warburg and Christian (1938) to be a flavoprotein with FAD as its prosthetic group. A few years later Green found an L-amino acid oxidase in liver. It was however limited in its specificity for amino acid substrates and not very active—characteristics which again precluded its central role in deamination. 

In flavin-dependent monooxygenases, a flavin-oxygen intermediate reacts with the substrate, also producing water in a second step, and requiring cofactors for regeneration of the flavin moiety. The unusual flavoprotein vanillyl-alcohol oxidase (EC 1.1.3.38), in which the flavin moiety is covalently bound, catalyzes the oxidation of p-substituted phenols as well as deamination, hydroxylation and dehydrogenation reactions [10]. 

Putidaredoxin. Cushman et al. (36) isolated a low molecular iron-sulfur protein from camphor-grown Pseudomonas putida. This protein, putidaredoxin, is similar to the plant type ferredoxins with two irons attached to two acid-labile sulfur atoms (37). It has a molecular weight of 12,000 and shows absorption maxima at 327, 425 and 455 nm. Putidaredoxin functions as an electron transfer component of a methylene hydroxylase system involved in camphor hydroxylation by P. putida. This enzyme system consists of putidaredoxin, flavoprotein and cytochrome P.cQ (38). The electron transport from flavoprotein to cytochrome P.cq is Smilar to that of the mammalian mixed-function oxidase, but requires NADH as a primary electron donor as shown in Fig. 4. In this bacterial mixed-function oxidase system, reduced putidaredoxin donates an electron to substrate-bound cytochrome P. g, and the reduced cytochrome P. g binds to molecular oxygen. One oxygen atom is then used for substrate oxidation, and the other one is reduced to water (39, 40). 

Amine oxidation. As well as the microsomal enzymes involved in the oxidation of amines, there are a number of other amine oxidase enzymes, which have a different subcellular distribution. The most important are the monoamine oxidases and the diamine oxidases. The monoamine oxidases are located in the mitochondria within the cell and are found in the liver and also other organs such as the heart and central nervous system and in vascular tissue. They are a group of flavoprotein enzymes with overlapping substrate specificities. Although primarily of importance in the metabolism of endogenous compounds such as 5-hydroxy try pt-amine, they may be involved in the metabolism of foreign compounds. 

The other classes of flavoproteins in table 10.2 interact with molecular oxygen either as the electron-acceptor substrates in redox reactions catalyzed by oxidases or as the substrate sources of oxygen atoms for oxygenases. Molecular oxygen also serves as an electron acceptor and source of oxygen for metalloflavoproteins and dioxygenases, which are not listed in the table. These enzymes catalyze more complex reactions, involving catalytic redox components, such as metal ions and metal-sulfur clusters in addition to flavin coenzymes. 

From the sequence of reactions found it follows that copper-quinoprotein amine oxidases catalyze an aminotransferase reaction. A different reaction sequence occurs with flavoprotein amine oxidases (EC 1.4.3.4), where formation of NH3 is not dependent on the presence of 02. However, since reductive trapping of amines in the first half-reaction [86] showed attachment of substrate but not of tritium, the mechanism is also different from the aminotransferase reaction that... 

Disaccharides and even some insoluble polysaccharides are substrates, but not monosaccharides. Cellobiose oxidase is unusual among flavoproteins, as it stabilises the red anionic flavin semiquinone and forms a sulphite adduct, yet appears to produce the superoxide anion as its primary reduced oxygen product. 

The system depends on an electron transport pathway that transfers electrons from NADPH through a flavoprotein (NADPH cytochrome P-450 reductase) to cytochrome P-450 that is the terminal oxidase of the chain (10). The xenobiotic first forms a complex with the oxidized form o cytochrome P-450 which is reduced by an electron passing down the chain from NADPH. The reduced cytochrome P-450/substrate complex then reacts with and activates molecular oxygen to an electrophilic oxene species (an electron deficient species similar to singlet oxygen) that is transferred to the substrate with the concommitant formation of water. Cytochrome P-450 thus acts primarily as an oxene transferase (2). Substrate binding is a relatively nonspecific, passive process that serves to bring the xenobiotic into close association with the active center and provide the opportunity for the oxene transfer to occur. 

Recently, L-amino acid deaminase (EC 1.4.3.x) activities have been identified, particularly from the Proteus genus [59]. This enzyme, constituted by 370 residues, is an FAD-containing L-amino acid oxidase flavoprotein that uses molecular oxygen to convert L-amino acids into the corresponding a-keto adds and ammonia but does not produce hydrogen peroxide. L-amino acid deaminase prefers amino acids with aliphatic, aromatic, and sulfur-containing side chains (the best substrates are L-heu, L-Phe, L-Met, and L-Trp) and its kinetic efficiency is quite low because of the low Vnm value (<2 units/mg protein). 

The mechanism by which amines are oxidised by flavoproteins has been an issue of considerable debate in recent years. The debate has been particularly heated in the case of the enzyme monoamine oxidase (Silver-man, 1995). Through the use of a variety of mechanism-based inhibitors and based on studies of nonenzymic mechanisms of amine oxidation, a mechanism for monoamine oxidase in which substrate is initially oxidized by single electron transfer to the enzyme flavin to give an aminium cation... 

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