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Department of Biochemistry, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53706-1544, USA
(RECEIVED March 8, 2007; FINAL REVISION March 27, 2007; ACCEPTED April 2, 2007)
| Abstract |
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- and a
-phosphoryl oxygen, three waters, and the side chain of Asp 142 ligate the first magnesium, whereas the second ion is coordinated by an
-phosphoryl oxygen and five waters. The position of the first magnesium is conserved in both the glucose-1-phosphate thymidylyltransferases and the cytidylyltransferases. The structure presented here provides further support for the role of the conserved magnesium ion in the catalytic mechanisms of the sugar-1-phosphate nucleotidylyltransferases. Keywords: structure; crystallography; mechanism-enzymes
| Introduction |
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In recent years, our laboratory has been studying various enzymes that are involved in the biosynthesis of unusual di- and trideoxysugars found in the lipopolysaccharides of some Gram-negative bacteria (Schnaitman and Klena 1993) and in certain macrolide antibiotics (Trefzer et al. 1999). These sugars are produced via distinct biosynthetic pathways using dTDP-, CDP-, and GDP-activated sugars as the initiating ligands (Liu and Thorson 1994). The pathways for the synthesis of these unusual sugars typically begin with the attachment of
-D-glucose-1-phosphate or
-D-mannose-1-phosphate to an NMP moiety via a nucleotidylyltransferase and the concomitant loss of pyrophosphate. The three-dimensional structures of the thymidylyltransferases (Blankenfeldt et al. 2000; Barton et al. 2001, 2002; Zuccotti et al. 2001; Sivaraman et al. 2002) and the cytidylyltransferases (Koropatkin and Holden 2004; Koropatkin et al. 2005) have been well characterized.
To expand our understanding of these types of nucleotidylyltransferases, we recently solved the three-dimensional structure of glucose-1-phosphate uridylyltransferase (UGPase) from Escherichia coli, which catalyzes a similar reaction, namely, the production of UDP-glucose from UTP and glucose-1-phosphate (Scheme 1). Given the central role of UDP-glucose in galactose utilization (Holden et al. 2003), in glycogen synthesis (Alonso et al. 1995), and in the production of the carbohydrate moieties of glycolipids (Sandhoff et al. 1992), glycoproteins (Roth 1995; Verbert 1995), and proteoglycans (Silbert and Sugumaran 1995), the enzyme is ubiquitous in nature. Strikingly, the prokaryotic and eukaryotic forms of the enzyme are completely unrelated in amino acid sequence and three-dimensional structure (Flores-Diaz et al. 1997; Mollerach et al. 1998; Mollerach and Garcia 2000).
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-sheet with two additional layers of
-sheet and 10
-helices. The tetramer displays 222 symmetry and can be described as a dimer of dimers. As labeled in Figure 1, Subunits 1 and 4 and 2 and 3 form the "tight" dimers with their C-terminal helices wrapping around one another. The overall fold of UGPase is similar to that observed for the glucose-1-phosphate thymidylyltransferases. Attempts to prepare crystals of the E. coli UGPase in the presence of its substrates, glucose-1-phosphate and UTP, or its product UDP-glucose were unsuccessful. Consequently, to more fully define the active site of the enzyme, we cloned, overexpressed, purified, and solved the three-dimensional structure of UGPase from Corynebacterium glutamicum complexed with UDP-glucose and magnesium to 2.0 Å resolution. Here we describe the detailed geometry of the UGPase active site and compare its mode of product binding to that observed for both the thymidylyltransferases and the cytidylyltransferases.
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| Results and Discussion |
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100 Å x 70 Å x 90 Å. In all of the subunits, the first nine to 11 residues were disordered, and several residues were missing at the C terminus as well. Also, there was a break in the electron density between Arg 89 and Asp 93 in Subunit 4. Not surprisingly, given that the amino acid sequence identity between the C. glutamicum and E. coli UGPases is 40%, the C. glutamicum UGPase quaternary structure is basically the same as that shown in Figure 1 for the E. coli enzyme. The total buried surface area for the "tight" dimer is
5600 Å2, whereas that for the "loose" dimer is 630 Å2. The four subunits of the C. glutamicum UGPase tetramer are similar such that their
-carbons superimpose with root-mean-square deviations of between 0.24 Å and 0.31 Å. Thus, for the sake of clarity, the following discussion refers only to Subunit 1 in the X-ray coordinate file unless otherwise noted.
Overall, the
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angles for the complete tetramer are good with 92.4%, 6.9%, 0.3%, and 0.4% lying in the core, allowed, generously allowed, and disallowed regions of the Ramachandran plot, respectively. The only significant outlier is Val 41 with dihedral angles of
= 72.3° and
= 78.1°. This residue is positioned in a sharp reverse turn located in the random-coil region connecting
-strand 1 to the first
-helix of the subunit. It is also a valine in the E. coli UGPase and adopts the same strained dihedral angles. There are two cis prolines in the C. glutamicum UGPase at Pro 28, which is conserved in the E. coli enzyme, and Pro 147, which is a trans serine in the E. coli UGPase. Pro 147 resides in a surface loop connecting
-strand 5 to
-helix 6, whereas Pro 28 sits in an approximate Type III reverse turn formed by Leu 27 to Thr 30. Neither is close to the active site pocket.
A ribbon representation of Subunit 1 is presented in Figure 2A. The subunit has molecular dimensions of
50 Å x 50 Å x 60 Å and is dominated by a mixed
-sheet composed of nine strands. This
-sheet serves to cradle the UDP-glucose moiety. In addition to this large
-sheet, there is also a two-stranded antiparallel
-sheet, which forms another side of the active site pocket. The subunit also contains 11 major
-helical regions. As can be seen in Figure 2A, the subunit is roughly globular except for two regions, both of which form part of the "tight" dimer interface. The first of these is the helixloophelix motif delineated by Ser 80 to Leu 104, which curls into the active site of the second subunit of the tight dimer (Fig. 2B). As is discussed below, this loop was disordered in the E. coli enzyme structure, and it was postulated to become ordered upon substrate or product binding (Thoden and Holden 2007). The second region that extends the otherwise globular nature of the UGPase subunit is the C-terminal helixloophelix motif formed by Pro 270 to Ala 305. This motif wraps around its twofold-related partner from Subunit 4 as shown in Figure 2B.
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- and a
-phosphoryl oxygen from the UDP-glucose, three water molecules, and the side chain of Asp 142. The specific metal:ligand distances, which range from 2.0 to 2.2 Å, are listed in Table 1. The second magnesium ion is coordinated by an
-phosphoryl oxygen and five waters with metal:ligand distances ranging from 2.0 to 2.3 Å. In the case of glucose-1-phosphate cytidylyltransferase, there is some indication in the kinetic data that a second Mg2+ ion may be required in addition to that forming the Mg2+-CTP complex (Koropatkin et al. 2005). Only one magnesium ion was observed, however, in the cytidylyltransferase/UDP-glucose structure (Koropatkin and Holden 2004).
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A close-up view of the C. glutamicum UGPase active site with bound UDP-glucose is presented in Figure 3C. The uracil ring of the product lies within hydrogen-bonding distance to the backbone nitrogens of Ala 20 and Gly 117 and the side chain carboxamide group of Gln 112. The ribose 2-hydroxyl group is situated within hydrogen-bonding distance to the side chain of Glu 36, a water molecule, and the backbone amide nitrogen of Gly 21. In our model of the E. coli enzyme, we postulated that Asp 137 would hydrogen-bond to the 3-hydroxyl group of the ribose (Fig. 3B). As indicated in Figure 3C, however, this aspartate (Asp 142) actually functions as a metal ion ligand. In the C. glutamicum enzyme, Lys 202 interacts with a
-phosphoryl oxygen of UDP-glucose, and Glu 201 hydrogen-bonds to both the 2'- and 3'-hydroxyl groups of the glycosyl moiety. The 4'-hydroxyl of the glycosyl group is anchored into the active site via interactions with the backbone nitrogen of Gly 180 and the carbonyl oxygen of Ala 214.
In the glucose-1-phosphate thymidylyltransferases, which are tetrameric, each active site is wholly contained within one subunit. This is in marked contrast to the hexameric glucose-1-phosphate cytidylyltransferases whereby the active sites are formed by residues from two subunits. One question that arises is whether, in the case of UGPase, the active site is contained within one subunit or formed by two monomers. As indicated in Figure 3C, all of the residues located within 3.2 Å of the product are contributed by one subunit. In the E. coli UGPase structure, solved in the absence of any substrates, products, or analogs, there was a disordered region between Glu 83 and Arg 88 that in one subunit was situated within
14 Å of the active site of the second subunit. It is this loop region where there is a 22-residue insertion in UGPase relative to the glucose-1-phosphate thymidylyltransferases. It was thus predicted in this first study of UGPase that this loop would become ordered upon substrate or product binding. Shown in Figure 4 is a superposition of the UGPases from E. coli and C. glutamicum near this loop region. As predicted, in the C. glutamicum UGPase with bound product, this loop is ordered, and both Arg 89 and Lys 91 from one subunit lie within
6 Å of the active site cavity of another subunit. It should be noted, however, that this loop is flexible and is disordered in Subunit 4.
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-phosphorus of the nucleotide (Blankenfeldt et al. 2000; Barton et al. 2001; Zuccotti et al. 2001; Koropatkin et al. 2005). Both the thymidylyltransferases and cytidylyltransferases require divalent cations for activity (Zuccotti et al. 2001; Koropatkin et al. 2005). As discussed above, however, these ions were not observed in the crystal structures of the thymidylyltransferases solved in the presence of product (most likely because of crystallization conditions). However, they were observed in the structures of the thymidylyltransferase/dTDP complex (Sivaraman et al. 2002) and the cytidylyltransferase/UDP-glucose and cytidylyltransferase/UTP complexes (Koropatkin and Holden 2004; Koropatkin et al. 2005).
A superposition of the UGPase/UDP-glucose and the thymidylyltransferase/UDP-glucose models near the active site pockets is presented in Figure 5A. Overall, the active sites are remarkably similar. However, owing to the lack of magnesium ions in the thymidylyltransferase/UDP-glucose complex, the ligand is shifted in the active site away from Lys 26 and toward Lys 163. While magnesium is not necessary for product binding, enzymological analyses clearly implicate its importance in catalysis (Bernstein and Robbins 1965; Zuccotti et al. 2001). The only known structure of a glucose-1-phosphate thymidylyltransferase with a bound magnesium ion (in a physiologically relevant position) is that determined by Sivaraman et al. (2002). The structure was solved to 2.6 Å resolution in the presence of dTTP and Mg2+. Shown in Figure 5B is a superposition of it onto the UGPase structure. Note the nearly identical positions of the magnesium ions in the two enzyme models. In the thymidylyltransferase complex, the magnesium is coordinated by an
-phosphoryl oxygen from the nucleotide and the carboxylate groups of Asp 108 and Asp 223. Given the resolution of the X-ray data, it was not possible to completely define the coordination sphere for the cation, although was it thought to be octahedral and completed by two waters. The distances between the magnesium and the oxygens of Asp 223 are quite long, however, at
2.6 Å. In UGPase, a similar interaction is observed between the magnesium ion and Asp 142 (which is structurally homologous to Asp 108 in the thymidylyltransferase).
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- and a
-phosphoryl oxygen from the nucleotide. While Asp 131 structurally corresponds to Asp 142 in UGPase, Asp 236 is an asparagine in UGPase.
While initial reports on the glucose-1-phosphate nucleotidylyltransferases appeared in the literature well over 25 years ago, the last few years have witnessed a renewed interest in their structure and function. This has occurred, in part, because of their biological roles in the production of activated nucleotide-linked sugars, which are absolutely required for the synthesis of the unusual deoxysugars found in the lipopolysaccharides of some Gram-negative bacteria (Schnaitman and Klena 1993), in extracellular polysaccharides (Reeves 1994), and in certain macrolide antibiotics (Trefzer et al. 1999). By comparing the differences in dTTP binding in the thymidylyltransferase with UDP-glucose binding in UGPase (Fig. 5B), it can be speculated that when the substrates, glucose-1-phosphate and UTP, are bound in the active site of UGPase, the catalytically important magnesium ion is coordinated by a phosphoryl oxygen from the sugar-phosphate and an
-phosphoryl oxygen from UTP. As proposed by Sivaraman et al. (2002), the magnesium ion likely enhances the catalytic activity of UGPase by both charge neutralization and by properly orienting the phosphoryl oxygen of glucose-1-phosphate for nucleophilic attack on the
-phosphorus of UTP. Most likely all the bacterial glucose-1-phosphate nucleotidylyltransferases, including the cytidylyltransferases and the still structurally uncharacterized glucose-1-phosphate guanylyltransferases, catalyze their reactions in a similar manner.
| Materials and Methods |
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cells, which were plated onto LB Agar supplemented with 100 µg/mL ampicillin. Individual colonies were selected and cultured overnight, and the plasmid DNA was extracted with a Qiaprep spin miniprep kit (QIAGEN). Plasmids were tested for incorporation of the GalU gene by digesting with both NdeI and XhoI.
Protein expression and purification
The GalU-pET31 plasmid was used to transform Rosetta (DE3) E. coli cells (Novagen). The culture was grown at 37°C with shaking until an optical density of 0.7 was reached at 600 nm. The cultures were then induced with 1 mM IPTG and allowed to grow for an additional 5 h before harvesting by centrifugation at 5000g for 15 min. The cell paste was frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored at 80°C.
All protein purification steps were carried out at 4°C unless otherwise noted. The cells were disrupted by sonication on ice. The lysate was cleared by centrifugation, and GalU was purified using Ni-NTA resin (QIAGEN) according to the manufacturer's instructions. The GalU protein sample was dialyzed against 10 mM Tris-HCl and 200 mM NaCl at pH 8.0. Following dialysis, the sample was concentrated to 15 mg/mL based on an extinction coefficient of 6.4 (mg/mL)1 · cm1 as calculated with the program PROTEAN (DNAstar).
Enzymatic activity
Enzymatic activity was determined via HPLC chromatography. For each reaction, 0.1 mg of enzyme was added to a 1-mL solution composed of 2 mM UTP, 4 mM MgCl2, and 2 mM sugar-1-phosphate buffered at pH 8 with 25 mM HEPPS. The reactions were allowed to proceed for 30 min at ambient temperature, after which time the enzyme was removed by filtration. The reaction mixture was loaded onto a 1-mL Resource-Q column equilibrated in 10 mM ammonium bicarbonate (pH 8), and the reaction products were separated by a linear gradient of ammonium carbonate to a final concentration of 750 mM. Retention times for known samples of UTP, UDP, UMP, UDP-glucose, and UDP-galactose were determined to allow for comparisons with the reaction products. Both glucose-1-phosphate and galactose-1-phosphate were verified to be substrates for the enzyme.
Crystallization of GalU
Crystallization conditions were first surveyed by the hanging-drop method of vapor diffusion with a sparse matrix screen developed in the laboratory. Large crystals were subsequently grown at room temperature via the hanging-drop method of vapor diffusion. The protein samples contained 10 mM Mg2UDP-glucose, and the precipitant solutions were composed of 20%23% poly(ethylene) glycol 3400, 200 mM MgCl2 buffered at pH 6.0 with 100 mM MES. The crystals grew to maximum dimensions of 0.8 mm x 0.3 mm x 0.2 mm in
23 wk. They belonged to the space group C2 with unit cell dimensions of a = 173.4 Å, b = 47.6 Å, c = 161.6 Å,
= 102.7°, and one tetramer in the asymmetric unit.
Structural analysis of GalU
All in-house X-ray data were measured at 4°C with a Bruker HISTAR area detector system. The X-ray source was CuK
radiation from a Rigaku RU200 X-ray generator operated at 50 kV and 90 mA. The X-ray data were processed and scaled with SAINT (Bruker AXS, Inc.). The final native data set used in the refinement of the UGPase/product model was collected at the Advanced Photon Source on the SBC-CAT beamline 19-ID. These data were processed and scaled with HKL3000 (Minor et al. 2006). Relevant X-ray data collection statistics are presented in Table 2.
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The structure of UGPase was solved by single isomorphous replacement using a crystal soaked in 1 mM methylmercury acetate for 24 h. Six mercury-binding sites were identified with the program SOLVE (Terwilliger and Berendzen 1999), giving an overall figure-of-merit of 0.2 to 3.0 Å resolution. Solvent flattening and molecular averaging with RESOLVE (Terwilliger 2000) generated an interpretable electron density map. A preliminary model for one subunit was built on the basis of this averaged map. This model served as a search probe for molecular replacement with the software package PHASER (Storoni et al. 2004) against the high-resolution synchrotron X-ray data set. Alternate cycles of manual model building and least-squares refinement with TNT (Tronrud et al. 1987) reduced the R-factor to 20.4% for all measured X-ray data from 20.0 to 2.0 Å resolution. Relevant refinement statistics are given in Table 3.
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| Note added in proof |
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| 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.072864707.
| Acknowledgments |
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