Intramolecular signal transmission in enterobacterial aspartate transcarbamylases II. Engineering co-operativity and allosteric regulation in the aspartate transcarbamylase of Erwinia herbicola

Exploring modular allostery via interchangeable regulatory domains

Most proteins comprise two or more domains from a limited suite of protein families. These domains are often rearranged in various combinations through gene fusion events to evolve new protein functions, including the acquisition of protein allostery through the incorporation of regulatory domains. The enzyme 3-deoxy-d-arabino-heptulosonate 7-phosphate synthase (DAH7PS) is the first enzyme of aromatic amino acid biosynthesis and displays a diverse range of allosteric mechanisms. DAH7PSs adopt a common architecture with a shared (β/α)₈ catalytic domain which can be attached to an ACT-like or a chorismate mutase regulatory domain that operates via distinct mechanisms. These respective domains confer allosteric regulation by controlling DAH7PS function in response to ligand Tyr or prephenate. Starting with contemporary DAH7PS proteins, two protein chimeras were created, with interchanged regulatory domains. Both engineered proteins were catalytically active and delivered new functional allostery with switched ligand specificity and allosteric mechanisms delivered by their nonhomologous regulatory domains. This interchangeability of protein domains represents an efficient method not only to engineer allostery in multidomain proteins but to create a new bifunctional enzyme.

Structural Investigation of Cold Activity and Regulation of Aspartate Carbamoyltransferase from the Extreme Psychrophilic Bacterium Moritella profunda

Aspartate carbamoyltransferase (EC 2.1.3.2) is extensively studied as a model for cooperativity and allosteric regulation. The structure of the Escherichia coli enzyme has been thoroughly analyzed by X-ray crystallography, and recently the crystal structures of two hyperthermophilic ATCases of the same structural class have been characterized. We here report the detailed functional and structural investigation of the ATCase from the psychrophilic deep sea bacterium Moritella profunda. Our analysis indicates that the enzyme conforms to the E. coli model in that two allosteric states exist that are influenced by similar homotropic interactions. The heterotropic properties differ in that CTP and UTP inhibit the holoenzyme, but ATP seems to exhibit a dual regulatory pattern, activating the enzyme at low concentrations and inhibiting it in the mM range. The crystal structure of the unliganded M. profunda ATCase shows resemblance to a more extreme T state reported previously for an E. coli ATCase mutant. A detailed molecular analysis reveals potential features of adaptation to cold activity and cold regulation. Moreover, M. profunda ATCase presents similarities with certain mutants of E. coli ATCase altered in their kinetic properties or temperature relationships. Finally, structural and functional comparison of ATCases across the full physiological temperature range agrees with an important, but fundamentally different role for electrostatics in protein adaptation at both extremes, i.e. an increased stability through the formation of ion pairs and ion pair networks at high physiological temperatures, and an increased flexibility through enhanced protein solvation at low temperatures.

Aspartate transcarbamylase from the hyperthermophilic archaeon Pyrococcus abyssi. Insights into cooperative and allosteric mechanisms

Aspartate transcarbamylase (ATCase) (EC 2.1.3.2) from the hyperthermophilic archaeon Pyrococcus abyssi was purified from recombinant Escherichia coli cells. The enzyme has the molecular organization of class B microbial aspartate transcarbamylases whose prototype is the E. coli enzyme. P. abyssi ATCase is cooperative towards aspartate. Despite constraints imposed by adaptation to high temperature, the transition between T- and R-states involves significant changes in the quaternary structure, which were detected by analytical ultracentrifugation. The enzyme is allosterically regulated by ATP (activator) and by CTP and UTP (inhibitors). Nucleotide competition experiments showed that these effectors compete for the same sites. At least two regulatory properties distinguish P. abyssi ATCase from E. coli ATCase: (a) UTP by itself is an inhibitor; (b) whereas ATP and UTP act at millimolar concentrations, CTP inhibits at micromolar concentrations, suggesting that in P. abyssi, inhibition by CTP is the major control of enzyme activity. While V(max) increased with temperature, cooperative and allosteric effects were little or not affected, showing that molecular adaptation to high temperature allows the flexibility required to form the appropriate networks of interactions. In contrast to the same enzyme in P. abyssi cellular extracts, the pure enzyme is inhibited by the carbamyl phosphate analogue phosphonacetate; this difference supports the idea that in native cells ATCase interacts with carbamyl phosphate synthetase to channel the highly thermolabile carbamyl phosphate.

Tryptophan residues at subunit interfaces used as fluorescence probes to investigate homotropic and heterotropic regulation of aspartate transcarbamylase

The homotropic and heterotropic interactions in Escherichia coli aspartate transcarbamylase (EC 2.1.3.2) are accompanied by various structure modifications. The large quaternary structure change associated with the T to R transition, promoted by substrate binding, is accompanied by different local conformational changes. These tertiary structure modifications can be monitored by fluorescence spectroscopy, after introduction of a tryptophan fluorescence probe at the site of investigation. To relate unambiguously the fluorescence signals to structure changes in a particular region, both naturally occurring Trp residues in positions 209c and 284c of the catalytic chains were previously substituted with Phe residues. The regions of interest were the so-called 240's loop at position Tyr240c, which undergoes a large conformational change upon substrate binding, and the interface between the catalytic and regulatory chains in positions Asn153r and Phe145r supposed to play a role in the different regulatory processes. Each of these tryptophan residues presents a complex fluorescence decay with three to four independent lifetimes, suggesting that the holoenzyme exists in slightly different conformational states. The bisubstrate analogue N-phosphonacetyl-L-aspartate affects mostly the environment of tryptophans at position 240c and 145r, and the fluorescence signals were related to ligand binding and the quaternary structure transition, respectively. The binding of the nucleotide activator ATP slightly affects the distribution of the conformational substates as probed by tryptophan residues at position 240c and 145r, whereas the inhibitor CTP modifies the position of the C-terminal residues as reflected by the fluorescence properties of Trp153r. These results are discussed in correlation with earlier mutagenesis studies and mechanisms of the enzyme allosteric regulation.

The allosteric activator Mg-ATP modifies the quaternary structure of the R-state of Escherichia coli aspartate transcarbamylase without altering the T<-->R equilibrium

The allosteric enzyme aspartate transcarbamylase from Escherichia coli (ATCase) displays regulatory properties that involve various conformational changes, including a large quaternary structure rearrangement. This entails a major change in its solution X-ray scattering curve upon binding substrate analogues. We show here that, in the presence of the nucleotide effector ATP, known to stimulate the enzyme activity, the scattering profiles show a marked dependence on the metal bound to ATP. Whereas ATP has no major effect on the scattering pattern of ATCase, a saturating concentration of Mg-ATP notably modifies the scattering profile of the enzyme, either in the absence or in the presence of the bisubstrate analogue N-(phosphonacetyl)-l-aspartate (PALA). The transition with PALA in the presence of this metal-nucleotide complex remains concerted. Furthermore, Mg-ATP, as already observed with ATP, has no detectable direct effect on the T to R transition. The experimental scattering curves in the presence of Mg-ATP were fitted by a modeling approach using rigid body movements of the regulatory subunits and the catalytic trimers in the crystal structures. While the differences observed in the T-state in the presence of Mg-ATP are essentially attributed to the binding per se of the nucleotide, the solution structure of the R-state complexed to Mg-ATP is even more extended along the 3-fold axis than the previously described R solution structure, which is already more stretched out along the same axis than the crystal R structure. Based on the crystal structure of the enzyme in the R-state complexed with free ATP, a proposal is made to account for the effect of magnesium.

Divergent allosteric patterns verify the regulatory paradigm for aspartate transcarbamylase

The native Escherichia coli aspartate transcarbamoylase (ATCase, E.C. 2.1.3.2) provides a classic allosteric model for the feedback inhibition of a biosynthetic pathway by its end products. Both E. coli and Erwinia herbicola possess ATCase holoenzymes which are dodecameric (2(c3):3(r2)) with 311 amino acid residues per catalytic monomer and 153 and 154 amino acid residues per regulatory (r) monomer, respectively. While the quaternary structures of the two enzymes are identical, the primary amino acid sequences have diverged by 14 % in the catalytic polypeptide and 20 % in the regulatory polypeptide. The amino acids proposed to be directly involved in the active site and nucleotide binding site are strictly conserved between the two enzymes; nonetheless, the two enzymes differ in their catalytic and regulatory characteristics. The E. coli enzyme has sigmoidal substrate binding with activation by ATP, and inhibition by CTP, while the E. herbicola enzyme has apparent first order kinetics at low substrate concentrations in the absence of allosteric ligands, no ATP activation and only slight CTP inhibition. In an apparently important and highly conserved characteristic, CTP and UTP impose strong synergistic inhibition on both enzymes. The co-operative binding of aspartate in the E. coli enzyme is correlated with a T-to-R conformational transition which appears to be greatly reduced in the E. herbicola enzyme, although the addition of inhibitory heterotropic ligands (CTP or CTP+UTP) re-establishes co-operative saturation kinetics. Hybrid holoenzymes assembled in vivo with catalytic subunits from E. herbicola and regulatory subunits from E. coli mimick the allosteric response of the native E. coli holoenzyme and exhibit ATP activation. The reverse hybrid, regulatory subunits from E. herbicola and catalytic subunits from E. coli, exhibited no response to ATP. The conserved structure and diverged functional characteristics of the E. herbicola enzyme provides an opportunity for a new evaluation of the common paradigm involving allosteric control of ATCase.