|
|
||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
1 Roy and Diana Vagelos Laboratories, Department of Chemistry, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-6323, USA
2 Department of Entomology and U.C.D. Cancer Center, University of California, Davis, California 956168584, USA
Reprint requests to: David W. Christianson, Department of Chemistry, University of Pennsylvania, 231 S. 34th St., Philadelphia, PA, 19104-6323; e-mail: chris{at}xtal.chem.upenn.edu; fax: (215) 573-2201.
(RECEIVED July 21, 2005; FINAL REVISION September 27, 2005; ACCEPTED October 3, 2005)
| Abstract |
|---|
|
|
|---|
Keywords: domain swapped dimer; epoxide hydrolase; inhibition
Article published online ahead of print. Article and publication date are at http://www.proteinscience.org/cgi/doi/10.1110/ps.051720206.
| Introduction |
|---|
|
|
|---|
The best class of sEH inhibitors to date are the dialkylureas (Morisseau et al. 1998, 1999; McElroy et al. 2003), which typically bind as analogs of the transition state for epoxide ring opening such that the urea C==O moiety accepts hydrogen bonds from Y381 and Y465 and one urea NH group donates a hydrogen bond to D333 (Fig. 1
) (Argiriadi et al. 2000; Gomez et al. 2004). However, there are examples of unexpected binding modes for dialkyurea inhibitors: N-cyclohexyl- N'-(3-phenyl) propylurea (CPU, Table 1
) binds to murine sEH with an energetically unfavorable cis-amide linkage (Argiriadi et al. 1999), and N-cyclohexyl- N'-iodophenyl urea (CIU, Table 1
), while having similar inhibitory potency toward human sEH and murine sEH (IC50 values of 0.12 µM and 0.07 µM, respectively) (McElroy et al. 2003; Gomez et al. 2004), binds to these enzymes with opposite orientations (Argiriadi et al. 2000; Gomez et al. 2004).
|
|
| Results and Discussion |
|---|
|
|
|---|
Crystal structures of human sEHinhibitor complexes
The binding of 4-(3-cyclohexylureido)-ethanoic acid (CU2) does not induce any major structural changes in human sEH, as indicated by the root mean square (RMS) deviation of 0.4 Å for the 320 C
atoms of the C-terminal domains between the native enzyme and the enzymeinhibitor complex. Despite the modest 3.0 Å resolution and the poor inhibition exhibited by CU2 (IC50>500 µM), clear electron density defines the location and conformation of the inhibitor cyclohexyl group; a slight bulge in the electron density of the carboxylate may reflect some modest disorder (Fig. 2A
). The cyclohexyl group of CU2 makes van der Waals interactions in a hydrophobic region defined by F265, Y381, L406, M418, V497, and W524 (henceforth designated the "F265 pocket"), and the carboxylic acid group lies adjacent to a hydrophobic surface defined by W334, M337, and L498 (henceforth designated the "W334 niche"). This inhibitor-binding orientation is identical to that observed for the binding of N-cyclohexylurea inhibitors such as CIU (Table 1
) to murine sEH (Argiriadi et al. 2000), which bind with their cyclohexyl groups in the corresponding F265 pocket. It is possible that the carboxylic acid of CU2 is protonated as it binds to human sEH, since the binding of a negatively charged carboxylate in a hydrophobic environment would be destabilizing. Inhibitor binding is weakly stabilized by poorly oriented hydrogen bonds with Y381 and D333 (Fig. 2B
). Poor hydrogen-bond geometries and the placement of a carboxylate deep within a hydrophobic tunnel likely contribute to the poor inhibitory potency of CU2.
|
atoms of the C-terminal domains between the native enzyme and each enzyme inhibitor complex. The position and orientation of the inhibitor CU4 is established by unambiguous electron density at 2.3 Å resolution (Fig. 3A
|
|
Although the structure of the sEHCU7 complex reveals the expected hydrogen bond interactions between the urea C==O moiety and Y381 and Y465, and the urea NH groups and D333, the inhibitor binds in the same orientation as CU2 with its cyclohexyl group in the F265 pocket (Fig. 5
). The heptanoic acid moiety of CU7 extends around M337 through the active site tunnel. Elevated thermal B-factors for the carboxylate group suggest some degree of disorder for the aliphatic carboxylate group.
|
One key finding of the current work is that inhibitor potency is not predictive of inhibitor-binding orientation in the active site of human sEH. However, the crystal structures of human sEH complexed with dialkylurea inhibitors bearing pendant carboxylate groups allow us to explain some of the observed affinity trends (Kim et al. 2004). For example, although addition of the pendant carboxylate group blunts inhibitory potency due to the binding of the carboxylate in the hydrophobic active-site tunnel, this destabilizing interaction is readily neutralized by esterification of the carboxylate: The methyl esters of CU2, CU4, and CU6 bind with much higher affinities than the carboxylic acids (Table 1
), and this is the case regardless of whether inhibitors bind with the aliphatic carboxylate in the F 265 pocket or the W334 niche. Important structural inferences can also be made regarding structureaffinity relationships for a second family of inhibitors characterized by a bulky N-adamantyl substituent (Table 1
). The N,N'-diadamantylurea inhibitor exhibits high potency against human sEH, with IC50=6.4 µM (Morisseau et al. 2002). This suggests that the bulky adamantyl group can occupy either the F265 pocket or the W334 niche. Although the F265 pocket is larger, the free-energy cost of structural changes in the W334 niche triggered by the binding of N,N'-diadamantylurea must be partially offset by multiple van der Waals interactions with the bulky hydrocarbon moiety. Notably, 4-(3-adamantylureido)- butyric acid binds much more tightly than 4-(3- cyclohexylureido)-butyric acid (Table 1
), so the additional van derWaals interactions afforded by an adamantyl group compared with a cyclohexyl group significantly contribute to enzymeinhibitor affinity.
Model of human sEH-14,15-epoxyeicosatrienoic acid complex
Epoxyeicosatrienoic acids (EETs) are arachidonic acid metabolites of the cytochrome P-450 epoxygenases that produce vasodilatation by hyperpolarization of smooth muscle cells via activation of Ca2+-activated K+ channels (Hu and Kim 1993; Harder et al. 1995; Campbell et al. 1996; Fisslthaler et al. 1999; Capdevila et al. 2000; Quilley and McGiff 2000). As such, 14,15-EET has antihypertensive properties that are not attributed to their sEH hydrolyzed diol products. The targeted disruption of sEH is therefore a potential therapeutic strategy for the treatment of hypertension (Sinal et al. 2000).
The binding modes of EET substrates in the active site of sEH are potentially exemplified by the binding of cyclohexylureido carboxylate inhibitors bearing longer aliphatic tails, e.g., CU7. Assuming that the transition state analogy of Figure 1
holds for the EET, then this substrate threads through the active site tunnel until the epoxide moiety hydrogen bonds with Y381 and Y465. It appears that either orientation of the EET could be accommodated in the active-site tunnel of human sEH. However, given that the inhibitor N-cyclohexyl-N-decylurea binds with its long aliphatic chain exclusively on the Met 337 side of the active-site tunnel (Argiriadi et al. 2000), and given that the aliphatic carboxylate chain of the inhibitor CU7 binds with a similar orientation (Fig. 5
), we hypothesize that the long unsaturated chain of the proposed endogenous sEH substrate, 14,15-EET, similarly binds on the Met 337 side of the active-site tunnel. A model of this putative enzymesubstrate complex is presented in Figure 6
.
|
| Materials and methods |
|---|
|
|
|---|
-D-maltoside (Hampton) was equilibrated against a 1-mL reservoir of precipitant buffer at 4 °C. Hexagonal rods appeared in ~7 d with dimensions of 0.4 mm x 0.1 mm x 0.1 mm. Crystals belonged to space group P6522 with unit cell parameters a=b
93 Å and c
244 Å . Crystals were then soaked in precipitation buffer containing 30 mM inhibitor for 3 d. Following transfer to a 20% sucrose cryoprotectant and flash-cooling, crystals yielded diffraction data to 3.0 Å resolution for 4-(3-cyclohexylureido)- ethanoic acid (CU2), 2.3 Å resolution for 4-(3- cyclohexylureido)-butyric acid (CU4), and 2.6 Å resolution for 4-(3-cyclohexylureido)-heptanoic acid (CU7) at the Advanced Light Source, Berkeley (beamline 5.0.3 with an ADSC Quantum 4R detector at 100 K). Crystals of human sEH complexed with 4-(3-cyclohexylureido)-hexanoic acid (CU6) yielded diffraction to 2.7 Å resolution on our home X-ray source (Rigaku RU-200HB rotating X-ray generator operating at 100 mA, 50 kV, equipped with an R-Axis IV++ image plate detector).
X-ray intensity data reduction was achieved with Denzo/ Scalepack and Crystal Clear (Otwinowski and Minor 1997; Pflugrath 1999). Molecular replacement calculations utilized AMoRe (Navaza 1994) with the native human sEH monomer (1S8O) (Gomez et al. 2004) as the search probe. Iterative cycles of refinement and model building using CNS (Brünger et al. 1998) and O (Jones et al. 1991), respectively, improved each protein structure as monitored by Rfree. Group B-factors were utilized for the refinement of human sEH complexed with CU2 and CU6, and individual B-factors were utilized for the refinement of the human sEHCU4 and sEHCU7 complexes. Buffer molecules, ions, and water molecules were included in later cycles of refinement. Inhibitor molecules were added in the final stages of refinement. Data reduction and refinement statistics are recorded in Table 2
.
|
| Acknowledgments |
|---|
| References |
|---|
|
|
|---|
Argiriadi, M.A., Morisseau, C., Hammock, B.D., and Christianson, D.W. 1999. Detoxification of environmental mutagens and carcinogens: Structure, mechanism, and evolution of liver epoxide hydrolase. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 99: 1063710642.
Argiriadi, M.A., Morisseau, C., Goodrow, M.H., Dowdy, D.L., Hammock, B.D., and Christianson, D.W. 2000. Binding of alkylurea inhibitors to epoxide hydrolase implicates active site tyrosines in substrate activation. J. Biol. Chem. 275: 1526515270.
Beetham, J.K., Tian, T., and Hammock, B.D. 1993. cDNA cloning and expression of a soluble epoxide hydrolase from human liver. Arch. Biochem. Biophys. 305: 197201.[CrossRef][Medline]
Borhan, B., Jones, A.D., Pinot, F., Grant, D.F., Kurth, M.J., and Hammock, B.D. 1995. Mechanism of soluble epoxide hydrolase. J. Biol. Chem. 270: 2692326930.
Brünger, A.T., Adams, P.D., Clore, G.M., DeLano, W.L., Gros, P., Grosse-Kunstleve, R.W., Jiang, J.-S., Kuszewski, J., Nilges, M., Pannu, N.S., et al. 1998. Crystallography and NMR system: A new software suite for macromolecular structure determination. Acta Crystallogr. D Biol. Crystallogr. 54: 905921.[CrossRef][Medline]
Campbell, W.B., Gebremedhin, D., Pratt, P.F., and Harder, D.R. 1996. Identification of epoxyeicosatrienoic acids as endothelium-derived hyperpolarizing factors. Circ. Res. 78: 415423.
Capdevila, J.H., Falck, J.R., and Harris, R.C. 2000. Cytochrome P450 and arachidonic acid bioactivation: Molecular and functional properties of the arachidonate monooxygenase. J. Lipid Res. 41: 163181.
DeLano, W.L. 2002. The PyMOL users manual. DeLano Scientific, San Carlos, CA.
Esnouf, R.M. 1997. An extensively modified version of Mol Script that includes greatly enhanced coloring capabilities. J. Mol. Graph. Model. 15: 132134.[CrossRef][Medline]
Fang, X., Kaduce, T.L., Weintraub, N.L., Harmon, S., Teesch, L.M., Morisseau, C., Thompson, D.A., Hammock, B.D., and Spector, A.A. 2001. Pathways of epoxyeicosatrienoic acid metabolism in endothelial cells. J. Biol. Chem. 276: 1486714874.
Fisslthaler, B., Popp, R., Kiss, L., Potente, M., Harder, D.R., Fleming, I., and Busse, R. 1999. Cytochrome P450 2C is an EDHF synthase in coronary arteries. Nature 401: 493497.[CrossRef][Medline]
Fleming, I. 2001. Cytochrome P450 enzymes in vascular homeostasis. Circ. Res. 89: 753762.
Gomez, G.A., Morisseau, C., Hammock, B.D., and Christianson, D.W. 2004. Structure of human epoxide hydrolase reveals mechanistic inferences on bifunctional catalysis in epoxide and phosphate ester hydrolysis. Biochemistry 43: 47164723.[CrossRef][Medline]
Hammock, B.D., Pinot, F., Beetham, J.K., Grant, D.F., Arand, M.E., and Oesch, F. 1994. Isolation of a putative hydroxyacyl enzyme intermediate of an epoxide hydrolase. Biochem. Biophys. Res. Commun. 198: 850856.[CrossRef][Medline]
Hammock, B.D., Grant, D.F., and Storms D.H. 1997. Epoxide hydrolases. In Comprehensive toxicology: Biotransformation (eds. I. Sipes et al.), pp. 283305. Elsevier, New York.
Harder, D.R., Campbell, W.B., and Roman, R.J. 1995. Role of cytochrome P-450 enzymes and metabolites of arachidonic acid in the control of vascular tone. J. Vasc. Res. 32: 7992.[Medline]
Hu, S. and Kim, H.S. 1993. Activation of K+ channel in vascular smooth muscles by cytochrome P450 metabolites of arachidonic acid. Eur. J. Pharmacol. 230: 215221.[CrossRef][Medline]
Imig, J.D., Zhao, X., Capdevila, J.H., Morisseau, C., and Hammock, B.D. 2002. Soluble epoxide hydrolase inhibition lowers arterial blood pressure in angiotensin II hypertension. Hypertension 39: 690694.
Jones, T.A., Zou, J.-Y., Cowan, S.W., and Kjeldgaard, M. 1991. Improved methods for building protein models in electron density maps and the location of errors in these models. Acta Crystallogr. A 47: 110119.
Kim, I.-H., Morisseau, C., Watanabe, T., and Hammock, B.D. 2004. Design, synthesis, and biological activity of 1,3-disubstituted ureas as potent inhibitors of the soluble epoxide hydrolase of increased water solubility. J. Med. Chem. 47: 21102122.[CrossRef][Medline]
Kraulis, P.J. 1991. Molscript: A program to produce both detailed and schematic plots of protein structures. J. Appl. Cryst. 24: 946950.[CrossRef]
Lacourciere, G.M. and Armstrong, R.N. 1993. The catalytic mechanism of microsomal epoxide hydrolase involves an ester intermediate. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 115: 1046610467.[CrossRef]
Laughlin, L.T., Tzeng, H.-F., Lin, S., and Armstrong, R.N. 1998. Mechanism of microsomal epoxide hydrolase. Semifunctional site-specific mutants affecting the alkylation half-reaction. Biochemistry 37: 28972904.[CrossRef][Medline]
McElroy, N.R., Jurs, P.C., Morisseau, C., and Hammock, B.D. 2003. QSAR and classification of murine and human soluble epoxide hydrolase inhibition by urea-like compounds. J. Med. Chem. 46: 10661080.[CrossRef][Medline]
Merritt, E.A. and Murphy, M.E.P. 1994. Raster 3D Version 2.0. A program for photorealistic molecular graphics. Acta. Crystallogr. D Biol. Crystallogr. 50: 869873.[CrossRef][Medline]
Morisseau, C., Du, G., Newman, J.W., and Hammock, B.D. 1998. Mechanism of mammalian soluble epoxide hydrolase inhibition by chalcone oxide derivatives. Arch. Biochem. Biophys. 356: 214228.[CrossRef][Medline]
Morisseau, C., Goodrow, M.H., Dowdy, D., Zheng, J., Greene, J.F., Sanborn, J.R., and Hammock, B.D. 1999. Potent urea and carbamate inhibitors of soluble epoxide hydrolases. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 96: 88498854.
Morisseau, C., Goodrow, M.H., Newman, J.W., Wheelock, C.E., Dowdy, D.L., and Hammock, B.D. 2002. Structural refinement of inhibitors of urea-based soluble epoxide hydrolases. Biochem. Pharmacol. 63: 1599 1608.[CrossRef][Medline]
Müller, F., Arand, M., Frank, H., Seidel, A., Hinz, W., Winkler, L., Hänel, K., Blée, E., Beetham, J.K., Hammock, B.D., et al. 1997. Visualization of a covalent intermediate between microsomal epoxide hydrolase, but not cholesterol epoxide hydrolase, and their substrates. Eur. J. Biochem. 245: 490496.[Medline]
Nakagawa, Y., Wheelock, C.E., Morisseau, C., Goodrow, M.H., Hammock, B.G., and Hammock, B.D. 2000. 3-D QSAR analysis of inhibition of murine soluble epoxide hydrolase (MsEH) by benzoylureas, arylureas, and their analogues. Bioorg. Med. Chem. 8: 26632673.[Medline]
Navaza, J. 1994. AMoRe: an automated package for molecular replacement. Acta Crystallogr. A 50: 157163.[CrossRef]
Otwinowski, Z. and Minor, W. 1997. Processing of X-ray diffraction data collected in oscillation mode. Methods Enzymol. 276: 307326.
Pflugrath, J.W. 1999. The finer things in X-ray diffraction data collection. Acta Crystallogr. D Biol. Crystallogr. 55: 17181725.[CrossRef][Medline]
Pinot, F., Grant, D.F., Beetham, J.K., Parker, A.G., Borhan, B., Landt, S., Jones, A.D., and Hammock, B.D. 1995. Molecular and biochemical evidence for the involvement of the Asp-333His-523 pair in the catalytic mechanism of soluble epoxide hydrolase. J. Biol. Chem. 270: 79687974.
Quilley, J. and McGiff, J.C. 2000. Is EDHF an epoxyeicosatrienoic acid? Trends Pharmocol. Sci. 21: 121124.[CrossRef][Medline]
Sinal, C.J., Miyata, M., Tohkin, M., Nagata, K., Bend, J.R., and Gonzalez, F.J. 2000. Targeted disruption of soluble epoxide hydrolase reveals a role in blood pressure regulation. J. Biol. Chem. 275: 4050440510.
Wixtrom, R.N., Silva, M.H., and Hammock, B.D. 1988. Affinity purification of cytosolic epoxide hydrolase using derivatized epoxy-activated sepharose gels. Anal. Biochem. 169: 7180.[CrossRef][Medline]
Yamada, T., Morisseau, C., Maxwell, J.E., Argiriadi, M.A., Christianson, D.W. and Hammock, B.D. 2000. Biochemical evidence for the involvement of tyrosine in epoxide activation during the catalytic cycle of epoxide hydrolase. J. Biol. Chem. 275: 2308223088.
Zeldin, D.C., Kobayashi, J., Falck, J.R., Winder, B.S., Hammock, B.D., Snapper, J.R., and Capdevila, J.H. 1993. Regio- and enantiofacial selectivity of epoxyeicosatrienoic acid hydration by cytosolic epoxide hydrolase. J. Biol. Chem. 268: 64026407.
![]()
CiteULike
Connotea
Del.icio.us
Digg
Reddit
Technorati What's this?
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| HOME | HELP | FEEDBACK | SUBSCRIPTIONS | ARCHIVE | SEARCH | TABLE OF CONTENTS |