Two complementary enzymes for threonylation of tRNA in crenarchaeota: crystal structure of Aeropyrum pernix threonyl-tRNA synthetase lacking a cis-editing domain.

In protein synthesis, threonyl-tRNA synthetase (ThrRS) must recognize threonine (Thr) from the 20 kinds of amino acids and the cognate tRNA(Thr) from different tRNAs in order to generate Thr-tRNA(Thr). In general, an organism possesses one kind of gene corresponding to ThrRS. However, it has been recently found that some organisms have two different genes for ThrRS in the genome, suggesting that their proteins ThrRS-1 and ThrRS-2 function separately and complement each other in the threonylation of tRNA(Thr), one for catalysis and the other for trans-editing of misacylated Ser-tRNA(Thr). In order to clarify their three-dimensional structures, we performed X-ray analyses of two putatively assigned ThrRSs from Aeropyrum pernix (ApThrRS-1 and ApThrRS-2). These proteins were overexpressed in Escherichia coli, purified, and crystallized. The crystal structure of ApThrRS-1 has been successfully determined at 2.3 A resolution. ApThrRS-1 is a dimeric enzyme composed of two identical subunits, each containing two domains for the catalytic reaction and for anticodon binding. The essential editing domain is completely missing as expected. These structural features reveal that ThrRS-1 catalyzes only the aminoacylation of the cognate tRNA, suggesting the necessity of the second enzyme ThrRS-2 for trans-editing. Since the N-terminal sequence of ApThrRS-2 is similar to the sequence of the editing domain of ThrRS from Pyrococcus abyssi, ApThrRS-2 has been expected to catalyze deaminoacylation of a misacylated serine moiety at the CCA terminus.

Crystallization and preliminary crystallographic studies of putative threonyl-tRNA synthetases from Aeropyrum pernix and Sulfolobus tokodaii.

Threonyl-tRNA synthetase (ThrRS) plays an essential role in protein synthesis by catalyzing the aminoacylation of tRNA(Thr) and editing misacylation. ThrRS generally contains an N-terminal editing domain, a catalytic domain and an anticodon-binding domain. The sequences of the editing domain in ThrRSs from archaea differ from those in bacteria and eukaryotes. Furthermore, several creanarchaea including Aeropyrum pernix K1 and Sulfolobus tokodaii strain 7 contain two genes encoding either the catalytic or the editing domain of ThrRS. To reveal the structural basis for this evolutionary divergence, the two types of ThrRS from the crenarchaea A. pernix and S. tokodaii have been overexpressed in Eschericha coli, purified and crystallized by the hanging-drop vapour-diffusion method. Diffraction data were collected and the structure of a selenomethionine-labelled A. pernix type-1 ThrRS crystal has been solved using the MAD method.