Synthetase complexes, studies

From the preceding discussions, it is evident that, in all systems studied, and, in particular, in higher plants, attempts to synthesize cellulose in vitro have met with only limited success this therefore leads to the conclusion that, for poorly understood reasons, the cellulose synthetase complex is a highly labile system. As a conclusion to this article, it may prove useful for future research to discuss possible reasons for this apparent lability. 

Tryptophan synthetase from E. coli contains two different types of polypeptides which are referred to as a and subunits. The physiologically functional tryptophan synthetase complex consists of two a and two y8 subunits and may be represented by the stylised illustration shown in Fig. 26. Upon dilution the complex dissociates to furnish the a subunits as monomers of mol. wt. 29 000 and a dimer consisting of two j8 subunits, mol. wt. 100000. The dimer contains one pyridoxal phosphate per polypeptide chain. These two components have been separated and used in the study of partial reactions. 

The two well-studied lipopeptide bioemulsifiers produced by Bacilli—surfactin (Peypoux et al. 1999) and lichenysin (Yakimov et al. 1995)—are structurally similar. As already mentioned, both are composed of a cyclic heptapeptide linked to a fatty acid and differ in the last amino acid of the peptide—leucine and isoleucine, respectively. The peptide moiety, like many small peptides in microorganisms, is synthesized non-ribosomally by a multienzyme peptide synthetase complex (Marahiel 1997). The srfA operon of B. subtilis was defined by a transposon... 

Kater MM, Koningstein GM, Nijkamp HJJ and Stuitje AR. The use of a Hybrid Genetic System to Study the Functional Relationship between Prokaryotic and Plant Multi-Enzyme Fatty Acid Synthetase Complexes. Plant Mol Biol 1994 in press. 

One of the important consequences of studying catalysis by mutant enzymes in comparison with wild-type enzymes is the possibility of identifying residues involved in catalysis that are not apparent from crystal structure determinations. This has been usefully applied (Fersht et al., 1988) to the tyrosine activation step in tyrosine tRNA synthetase (47) and (49). The residues Lys-82, Arg-86, Lys-230 and Lys-233 were replaced by alanine. Each mutation was studied in turn, and comparison with the wild-type enzyme revealed that each mutant was substantially less effective in catalysing formation of tyrosyl adenylate. Kinetic studies showed that these residues interact with the transition state for formation of tyrosyl adenylate and pyrophosphate from tyrosine and ATP and have relatively minor effects on the binding of tyrosine and tyrosyl adenylate. However, the crystal structures of the tyrosine-enzyme complex (Brick and Blow, 1987) and tyrosyl adenylate complex (Rubin and Blow, 1981) show that the residues Lys-82 and Arg-86 are on one side of the substrate-binding site and Lys-230 and Lys-233 are on the opposite side. It would be concluded from the crystal structures that not all four residues could be simultaneously involved in the catalytic process. Movement of one pair of residues close to the substrate moves the other pair of residues away. It is therefore concluded from the kinetic effects observed for the mutants that, in the wild-type enzyme, formation of the transition state for the reaction involves a conformational change to a structure which differs from the enzyme structure in the complex with tyrosine or tyrosine adenylate. The induced fit to the transition-state structure must allow interaction with all four residues simultaneously. 

Based on our current understanding of ribosomal protein synthesis, several strategies have been developed to incorporate amino acids other than the 20 standard proteinogenic amino acids into a peptide using the ribosomal machinery . This allows for the design of peptides with novel properties. On the one hand, such a system can be used to synthesize nonstandard peptides that are important pharmaceuticals. In nature, such peptides are produced by nonribosomal peptide synthetases, which operate in complex pathways. On the other hand, non-natural residues are a useful tool in biochemistry and biophysics to study proteins. For example, incorporation of non-natural residues by the ribosome allows for site-specific labeling of proteins with spin labels for electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy, with... 

As the first committed step in the biosynthesis of AMP from IMP, AMPSase plays a central role in de novo purine nucleotide biosynthesis. A 6-phosphoryl-IMP intermediate appears to be formed during catalysis, and kinetic studies of E. coli AMPSase demonstrated that the substrates bind to the enzyme active sites randomly. With mammalian AMPSase, aspartate exhibits preferred binding to the E GTPTMP complex rather than to the free enzyme. Other kinetic data support the inference that Mg-aspartate complex formation occurs within the adenylosuccinate synthetase active site and that such a... 

Numerous equilibrium and kinetic studies have been made with tryptophan synthetase and its subunits, and considerable information has been obtained about the reaction pathway and reaction intermediates (cf. Refs. 89-92). For the purposes of this review, the principal conclusion reached is that the interaction of the a and j8 subunits appears to restrict the conformations of the a and /3 subunits to those that bind the substrates tightly and catalyze the reaction efficiently. The basic mechanism is not altered by the subunit interactions instead stabilization of particular conformations and binding sites is the important advantage gained in formation of the multienzyme complex. 

A high-resolution structure of a native enzyme is an admirable basis for any mechanistic study relating activity to precise details of structure. It is even better when structures of complexes with substrates and intermediates are available, as is the case with the tyrosyl-tRNA synthetase and tyrosyl adenylate (Figure 15.1). The E Tyr-AMP complex has two remarkable features. The first is the absence of groups that are candidates for roles in classical catalysis. The second is the... 

---