Urease nickel content

The first enzyme that was demonstrated to contain nickel was urease (urea amidohydrolase) from jack bean. It catalyzes the hydrolysis of urea to ammonia and carbon dioxide. The protein has a multimeric structure with a relative molecular mass of 590,000 Da. Analysis indicated 12 nickel atoms/mol. Binding studies with the inhibitors indicated an equivalent weight per active site of 105,000, corresponding to 2 nickel atoms/active site. During removal of the metal by treatment with EDTA at pH 3.7, the optical absorption and enzymatic activity correlated with nickel content. This, combined with the sensitivity of the enzyme to the chelating agents acetohydroxamic acid and phos-phoramidate, indicates that nickel is essential to the activity of the enzyme (1). 

Nickel is required for the synthesis of active urease in plant and other cells. The enzyme catalyzes the hydrolysis of urea to carbon dioxide and ammonia, via the intermediate formation of carbamate ion (equation 46). The molecular weight has been redetermined recently as 590 000 30 000, with six subunits. Each subunit has two nickel centres and binds one mole of substrate. The activity of the enzyme is directly proportional to the nickel content, suggesting an essential role for nickel in the enzyme. Several approaches, including EXAFS measurements, suggest that histidine residues provide some ligands to nickel, and that the geometry is distorted octahedral. There appears to be a role for a unique cysteine residue in each subunit out of the 15 groups present. Covalent modification of this residue blocks the activity of the enzyme. 

Urease (urea amidohydrolase) is an enzyme first identified over a hundred years ago in bacterial extracts [22], The presence of urease is a virulence factor for some pathogenic bacteria [23,24], It is now known to occur also in plants, fungi, and invertebrates (see [24,25] for reviews). Urease from jack bean was the first enzyme to be crystallized, in 1926. Almost 50 years later its metal content was reexamined and it was found to contain two atoms of nickel per subunit [26]. Finally in 1995 the crystal structure of the enzyme from the enteric bacterium Klebsiella aerogenes was determined [27], Amino-acid sequence comparisons predict that the structures of the plant and bacterial enzymes are similar, although with different subunit arrangements. 

Three Ni-confaintng enzymes (see Nickel Enzymes Cofactors) appear to utilize Ni metallochaperones for enzyme activation. UreE appears to function in NP+ delivery to urease. The Klebsiella aerogenes protein binds 6 Ni per dimer, whereas that from Bacillus pasteurii binds a single Ni per dimer. The metal content differences arise from a His-Asp-His sequence near the middle and a histidine-rich region at the carboxyl terminus of the former protein. Truncated K aerogenes UreE protein, missing the His-rich... 

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