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1 RIKEN Genomic Sciences Center, Tsurumi, Yokohama 230-0045, Japan
2 Graduate School of Biological Sciences, Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Ikoma, Nara 630-0101, Japan
3 Department of Biophysics and Biochemistry, Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan
(RECEIVED October 18, 2006; FINAL REVISION November 30, 2006; ACCEPTED December 4, 2006)
| Abstract |
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Keywords: crystal structure; N-end rule pathway; proteolysis; GNAT superfamily fold
| Introduction |
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The L/F-transferase is encoded by the aat gene, which was first isolated from Escherichia coli (JW0868) (Leibowitz and Soffer 1970). It also exists in actinobacteria, cyanobacteria, proteobacteria, chlorobi, spirochaetes, and thermus-deinococcus (Fig. 1) and is widely distributed in eubacteria (Ichetovkin et al. 1997). L/F-transferase catalyzes the transfer of Leu and Phe from aminoacyl-tRNAs to exposed N-terminal Arg or Lys residues of acceptor proteins (Leibowitz and Soffer 1971).
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-carbon and the side-chain hydrophobicity of the aminoacyl group of the aminoacyl-tRNA were recognized by the enzyme (Kaji et al. 1965; Scarpulla et al. 1976; Abramochkin and Shrader 1995). The research suggested that the recognition of the aminoacyl-tRNA by L/F-transferase started from the 5' end to the single-stranded 3'-terminal CCA, where no base pairs were formed at all (Abramochkin and Shrader 1996).
The L/F-transferase enzymatic activity core domain encompasses
120 amino acids (Ichetovkin et al. 1997), but the critical residues that catalyze the peptidyltransferase reaction are still unclear. Here, we determined the crystal structure of E. coli L/F-transferase, the first three-dimensional structure of an L/F-transferase. The structure of L/F-transferase contains two domains and revealed the location of the enzyme catalytic region at the domain interface.
| Results and Discussion |
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strands, with two parallel (
1,
2) and two anti-parallel (
3,
4), surrounded by an
helix (
1) and a 310-helix (3101) of the N-terminal domain (residues 163). The larger lobe of L/F-transferase comprises eight
strands with two parts of an anti-parallel
-sheet (
5,
10,
11;
6
9,
12), and with six
helices (
2
7) and a 310-helix (3102) (Fig. 2). An analysis of the molecular surface electrostatic potential indicated a long shallow cleft at the surface, running across the N-terminal and C-terminal domains. A large central cavity exists at the interface of the N-terminal and C-terminal domains, with the characteristic positive charge contributed by the corner of the cleft on the C-terminal domain surface (Fig. 3A), suggesting that they probably complement the negatively charged phosphate backbone of the substrate aminoacyl-tRNA. A structure database search was performed using the Dali server (Holm and Sander 1993). Three similar structures were found, including GCN5 histone acetyltransferase (Protein Data Bank [PDB] code 1PU9, Z-score = 10.3, sequence identity = 6%) (Clements et al. 2003), FemX transferase (PDB code 1XE4, Z-score = 9.8, sequence identity = 12%) (Maillard et al. 2005), and aminoglycoside 6'-N-acetyltransferase (PDB code 1S3Z, Z-score = 9.0, sequence identity = 12%) (Vetting et al. 2004). Although they lack significant sequence identity, the C-terminal domains of L/F-transferase and the others consist of the structurally conserved core region formed by four
helices and six
strands (
3
6,
6
11 in L/F-transferase), which is observed in the GCN5-related N-acetyltransferase (GNAT) family (Fig. 2B). In addition, the GNAT superfamily fold usually indicates the binding of acetyl-CoA, which donates the acetyl group that is transferred to a primary amine (Vetting et al. 2005).
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fold and to be smaller than that of FemX (Fig. 4). In contrast, the C-terminal domains of the two structures can be superimposed with a root-mean-square deviation (RMSD) of 2.7 Å for the structurally conserved GNAT superfamily fold (Fig. 4C; Dyda et al. 2000; Vetting et al. 2005). In addition, the two domains of the FemX structure share a similar fold structure, but the L/F-transferase did not exhibit the structural homology between the two domains. The FemX enzyme adds L-Ala to the
-amino group of L-Lys (Fig. 4B, C) in the UDP-MPP. It is bound in the interface of the two domains, thus implying the existence of a catalytic site in this region. Although the L/F-transferase and FemX appear to utilize the different substrates, the similar structural features revealed that the two proteins may share the substrate binding and active regions.
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1 and
3 of the N-terminal domain, and
4,
5,
9, and
10 of the C-terminal domain (Fig. 2A). Most of the conserved residues are extensively distributed within the cleft of L/F-transferase. Especially, the conserved residues Tyr42, Phe47, Trp111, Tyr120, Glu156, Ser157, Asp186, and Gln188 are assembled in the central cavity of the long cleft (Figs. 1, 3A). Notably, the completely conserved residue Glu156 is located at the central position of the cavity, and its side-chain is directed toward Tyr42 and Tyr120, respectively belonging to
1 and
4, which are highly conserved in the L/F-transferase family (Fig. 1). Thus, Tyr42 is located within hydrogen-bonding distance to Tyr120 and Glu156. It seems that Tyr120 and Glu156 are structurally similar to the critical residues for UDP-MPP binding in the FemX complex structure (Hegde and Shrader 2001; Biarrotte-Sorin et al. 2004). The other completely conserved residues, Asp186 and Gln188, are located at the end of
5, and Asp186 is positioned within hydrogen-bonding distance to Glu156 via two water molecules (Fig. 5). Interestingly, two aromatic residues, Phe47 and Trp111, are located at the entrance of the cavity of the L/F-transferase, and both of their side-chains point toward the inside of the cavity, implying that the aromatic rings of the residues should be favorable for tRNA stacking. The domain interface region of L/F-transferase contains many key conserved residues that form a hydrogen-bond network, suggesting that the cavity region is important for enzyme catalysis.
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| Materials and methods |
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Data collection, structure determination, and refinement
For data collection, all crystals were transferred to a cryoprotectant solution including 12% (v/v) of PEG 400, picked up in a 0.2-mm nylon loop, and then flash frozen in a cold nitrogen stream at 100 K. The MAD data sets were collected at three wavelengths, 0.9797 Å (edge), 0.9795 Å (peak), and 0.9680 Å (remote), to 1.6 Å resolution on the NW12A beamline at PF-AR (Tsukuba). Diffraction data were processed and scaled using the HKL2000 program (Otwinowski and Minor 1997). Data collection statistics are presented in Table 1.
For phase determination, eight selenium sites were located by using SOLVE (Terwilliger and Berendzen 1999). The resulting electron density map (figure of merit 0.58) was considerably improved by density modification with the program RESOLVE (Terwilliger 2002) (figure of merit 0.74). The model building was completed using the program O (Jones et al. 1991). Rigid-body, simulated annealing, energy minimization, and individual B-factor refinements were carried out using CNS (Brunger et al. 1998). The stereochemical quality of the final structural models was checked with PROCHECK (Laskowski et al. 1993). All figures were made with PyMOL (DeLano 2002), and superpositions of structures were prepared with LSQMAN (Kleywegt 1996).
The coordinates and structure factors have been deposited in the RCSB Protein Data Bank, with the accession code 2CXA.
| Footnotes |
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Article published online ahead of print. Article and publication date are at http://www.proteinscience.org/cgi/doi/10.1110/ps.062616107.
| Acknowledgments |
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