Sweet potato PAP

Purple acid phosphatase (PAP) or tartrate-resistant phosphatase is not thought to be a protein phosphatase but it has a very similar dimetallic active site structure to that found in protein phosphatases. PAPs have been identified in bacteria, plants, mammals, and fungi. The molecular weights (animal 35 kDa, plant 55 kDa) are different and they exhibit low sequence homology between kingdoms but the residues involved in coordination of the metal ions are invariant. " There has been considerable debate as to the identity of the metal ions in PAPs in vivo. Sweet potato, Ipomoea batatas, has been shown to possess two different PAP enzymes and the active site of one of them has been shown to contain one Fe and one Zn " " ion. Another report has established that the active site of a PAP from sweet potato contains one Fe " and one Mn +. The well-characterized red kidney bean enzyme and the soybean enzyme contain Fe " and Zn. Claims that PAP from sweet potato has 2Fe ions or 2Mn ions have been discussed elsewhere. One explanation is that these are different forms of the enzyme, another is that because the metal ions are labile and are rapidly incorporated into the active site, the enzyme contains a mixture of metal ions in vivo and the form isolated depends on the conditions of isolation. 

Crystal structures of PAP from red kidney beans, rat, and pig are available. A crystal structure determination of the Fe/Mn sweet potato enzyme has been carried out. The structures of the active sites are shown in Figure 33. 

The purple acid phosphatases (PAP) catalyze the hydrolysis of phosphate esters under acidic pH conditions (pH optimum 5) (9, 10). They differ from other acid phosphatases in having a distinct purple color due to the presence of iron or manganese and in being uninhibited by tartrate. Diiron units have been found in the active sites of the enzymes from mammalian spleen (171-173) and uterus (173, 174), while a heterodinu-clear FeZn unit has been characterized for the enzyme from red kidney bean (175). Either the Fe2 or the FeZn unit is catalytically competent in these enzymes, since the enzymes from porcine uterus and bovine spleen can be converted into active FeZn forms and the kidney bean enzyme can be transformed into an active Fe2 form (176). There are also enzymes from other plant sources (particularly sweet potato) that have been reported to have either a mononuclear Mn(III) or Fe(III) active site (177), but these are beyond the scope of the review. This section will focus on the enzymes from porcine uterus (also called uteroferrin), bovine spleen, and red kidney bean. 

Purple Acid Phosphatases. Purple acid phosphatases (PAPs) utilize a dinuclear metal center to catalyze the hydrolysis of phosphate monoesters. The characteristic purple color of these enzymes arises from a charge transfer absorption at about 560 nm, between a tyrosinate ligand and the conserved Fe + found in all PAPs. The second metal ion varies with the source of the enzyme and is always divalent. Mammalian PAPs are monomeric and have Fe -Fe " centers, whereas most plant PAPs are dimeric with Fe " -Zn + centers. A PAP isolated from sweet potato contains an Fe +-Mn + center, the first of its kind in any enzyme (26,27). This novel PAP also differs from others by its greater catalytic efficiency toward both activated and unactivated substrates (27), as well as in its strict requirement for manganese in the divalent site (26). 

The X-ray structures have been reported for the PAP from kidney bean (29), rat bone (30), pig (31), and sweet potato (32). Despite little sequence similarity, the enzymes share very similar catalytic sites with seven invariant amino acid ligands to the metal center (Fig. 7). The structnre of the kidney bean enzyme shows the two metal ions at a distance of 3.1 A, with a monodentate bridging Asp 164. The PAPs are related to the much larger group of Ser/Thr phosphatases (described in the next section) that share a sequence motif containing most of the residues coordinating the metal center at the active site. 

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