Structural and functional characterization of CalS11, a TDP-rhamnose 3'-O-methyltransferase involved in calicheamicin biosynthesis.

Sugar methyltransferases (MTs) are an important class of tailoring enzymes that catalyze the transfer of a methyl group from S-adenosyl-l-methionine to sugar-based N-, C- and O-nucleophiles. While sugar N- and C-MTs involved in natural product biosynthesis have been found to act on sugar nucleotide substrates prior to a subsequent glycosyltransferase reaction, corresponding sugar O-methylation reactions studied thus far occur after the glycosyltransfer reaction. Herein we report the first in vitro characterization using (1)H-(13)C-gHSQC with isotopically labeled substrates and the X-ray structure determination at 1.55 Å resolution of the TDP-3'-O-rhamnose-methyltransferase CalS11 from Micromonospora echinospora. This study highlights a unique NMR-based methyltransferase assay, implicates CalS11 to be a metal- and general acid/base-dependent O-methyltransferase, and as a first crystal structure for a TDP-hexose-O-methyltransferase, presents a new template for mechanistic studies and/or engineering.

Complete set of glycosyltransferase structures in the calicheamicin biosynthetic pathway reveals the origin of regiospecificity.

Glycosyltransferases are useful synthetic catalysts for generating natural products with sugar moieties. Although several natural product glycosyltransferase structures have been reported, design principles of glycosyltransferase engineering for the generation of glycodiversified natural products has fallen short of its promise, partly due to a lack of understanding of the relationship between structure and function. Here, we report structures of all four calicheamicin glycosyltransferases (CalG1, CalG2, CalG3, and CalG4), whose catalytic functions are clearly regiospecific. Comparison of these four structures reveals a conserved sugar donor binding motif and the principles of acceptor binding region reshaping. Among them, CalG2 possesses a unique catalytic motif for glycosylation of hydroxylamine. Multiple glycosyltransferase structures in a single natural product biosynthetic pathway are a valuable resource for understanding regiospecific reactions and substrate selectivities and will help future glycosyltransferase engineering.

Structural characterization of the mitomycin 7-O-methyltransferase.

Mitomycins are quinone-containing antibiotics, widely used as antitumor drugs in chemotherapy. Mitomycin-7-O-methyltransferase (MmcR), a key tailoring enzyme involved in the biosynthesis of mitomycin in Streptomyces lavendulae, catalyzes the 7-O-methylation of both C9ß- and C9α-configured 7-hydroxymitomycins. We have determined the crystal structures of the MmcR-S-adenosylhomocysteine (SAH) binary complex and MmcR-SAH-mitomycin A (MMA) ternary complex at resolutions of 1.9and 2.3 Å, respectively. The study revealed MmcR to adopt a common S-adenosyl-L-methionine-dependent O-methyltransferase fold and the presence of a structurally conserved active site general acid-base pair is consistent with a proton-assisted methyltransfer common to most methyltransferases. Given the importance of C7 alkylation to modulate mitomycin redox potential, this study may also present a template toward the future engineering of catalysts to generate uniquely bioactive mitomycins.

Crystallographic and nuclear magnetic resonance evaluation of the impact of peptide binding to the second PDZ domain of protein tyrosine phosphatase 1E.

PDZ (PSD95/Discs large/ZO-1) domains are ubiquitous protein interaction motifs found in scaffolding proteins involved in signal transduction. Despite the fact that many PDZ domains show a limited tendency to undergo structural change, the PDZ family has been associated with long-range communication and allostery. One of the PDZ domains studied most in terms of structure and biophysical properties is the second PDZ ("PDZ2") domain from protein tyrosine phosphatase 1E (PTP1E, also known as PTPL1). Previously, we showed through NMR relaxation studies that binding of the RA-GEF2 C-terminal peptide substrate results in long-range propagation of side-chain dynamic changes in human PDZ2 [Fuentes, E. J., et al. (2004) J. Mol. Biol. 335, 1105-1115]. Here, we present the first X-ray crystal structures of PDZ2 in the absence and presence of RA-GEF2 ligand, determined to resolutions of 1.65 and 1.3 Å, respectively. These structures deviate somewhat from previously determined NMR structures and indicate that very minor structural changes in PDZ2 accompany peptide binding. NMR residual dipolar couplings confirm the crystal structures to be accurate models of the time-averaged atomic coordinates of PDZ2. The impact on side-chain dynamics was further tested with a C-terminal peptide from APC, which showed results nearly identical to those of RA-GEF2. Thus, allosteric transmission in PDZ2 induced by peptide binding is conveyed purely and robustly by dynamics. (15)N relaxation dispersion measurements did not detect appreciable populations of a kinetic structural intermediate. Collectively, for ligand binding to PDZ2, these data support a lock-and-key binding model from a structural perspective and an allosteric model from a dynamical perspective, which together suggest a complex energy landscape for functional transitions within the ensemble.