A structural model for the glutamate-specific endopeptidase from Streptomyces griseus that explains substrate specificity

[Isolation and characteristics of Bacillus intermedius glutamyl endopeptidase secreted by a recombinant strain of Bacillus subtilis at various growth phases]

The recombinant strain of Bacillus subtilis bearing B. intermedius glutamyl endopeptidase gene in multicopy plasmid delta58.21 secretes the enzyme to the medium at the phase of slowing of growth and the stationary growth phase with accumulation maxima at 24 and 48 h. Enzyme samples were isolated from the culture liquid after 24 and 48 h of culturing of and were purified up to homogeneity by ion exchange chromatography on carboxymethyl cellulose and HPLC on a MonoS column. The molecular weight of the corresponding proteins was 29 kDa. Both preparations had identical structure, but differed in affinity to the specific substrate Z-Glu-pNA. The effects of Ca+ ions and specific low-molecular and protein inhibitors on the activity of the enzyme corresponding to various growth phases has been studied.

Crystal structure analysis of a serine proteinase from Streptomyces fradiae at 0.16-nm resolution and molecular modeling of an acidic-amino-acid-specific proteinase

We have determined the three-dimensional structure of a proteinase from Streptomyces fradiae ATCC 14544 (SFase-2) at 0.16-nm resolution. SFase-2, a typical serine proteinase, has broad substrate specificity. The characterization and crystallographic analysis of this enzyme have been reported previously [Kitadokoro, K., Tsuzuki, H., Nakamura, E., Sato, T. & Teraoka, H. (1994) Eur. J. Biochem. 220, 55-61]. In the present study, data were collected to approximately 0.16-nm resolution on a Rigaku R-AXIS IIC imaging plate detector system. Preliminary phases were obtained by molecular replacement methods with a search model derived from the previously determined structure of Streptomyces griseus protease A [Sielecki, A. R., Hendrickson, W. A., Broughton, C. G., Delbaere, L. T., Brayer, G. D. & James, M. N. (1979) J. Mol. Biol. 134, 781-804]. The starting model gave an initial crystallographic R factor of 0.443. Refinement with restrained least-squares converged at a final R factor of 0.182 for 16128 observed reflections. The final model includes 86 water molecules. The crystal structure showed that the enzyme consists of two domains, each of which is comprised of a beta barrel with six-stranded beta sheets and two alpha helices. The overall tertiary structure of SFase-2 is similar to the structures of other chymotrypsin-like proteinases from S. griseus, namely proteinase A and proteinase B. The essential residues of the catalytic triad are located on the cleft between the two domains. These two domains have different sequences, but possess similar three-dimensional structures, indicating that a gene duplication event has occurred to produce these two domains. We predicted the tertiary structure of an acidic-amino-acid-specific proteinase on the basis of the crystal structure of SFase-2, and compared the active-site conformations of these two enzymes. We found a characteristic histidine cluster of three histidine residues in the active site of the acidic-amino-acid-specific proteinase. The substrate recognition mechanism of SFase-2 may be mediated through the hydrophobic amino acid residues. However, in the acidic-amino-acid-specific proteinase, the positive charge of this histidine cluster would attract the negative charges of glutamic acid and aspartic acid.