Structural insight into industrially relevant glucoamylases: flexible positions of starch-binding domains.

Glucoamylases are one of the most important classes of enzymes in the industrial degradation of starch biomass. They consist of a catalytic domain and a carbohydrate-binding domain (CBM), with the latter being important for the interaction with the polymeric substrate. Whereas the catalytic mechanisms and structures of the individual domains are well known, the spatial arrangement of the domains with respect to each other and its influence on activity are not fully understood. Here, the structures of three industrially used fungal glucoamylases, two of which are full length, have been crystallized and determined. It is shown for the first time that the relative orientation between the CBM and the catalytic domain is flexible, as they can adopt different orientations independently of ligand binding, suggesting a role as an anchor to increase the contact time and the relative concentration of substrate near the active site. The flexibility in the orientations of the two domains presented a considerable challenge for the crystallization of the enzymes.

Ultra sensitive firefly luciferase-based protein-protein interaction assay (FlimPIA) attained by hinge region engineering and optimized reaction conditions.

Detecting and assaying protein-protein interactions are significant research procedures in biology and biotechnology. We recently reported a novel assay to detect protein-protein interaction, i.e. firefly luminescent intermediate-based protein-protein interaction assay (FlimPIA) using two mutant firefly luciferases (Flucs), which complement each other's deficient half reaction. This assay detects neighboring of two mutant Flucs, namely, a "Donor" that catalyzes the adenylation of firefly luciferin to produce a luciferyl-adenylate intermediate, and an "Acceptor" that catalyzes the subsequent light emitting reaction. However, its rather high background signal, derived from the remaining adenylation activity of the Acceptor, has limited its usefulness. To reduce this background signal, we introduced a mutation (R437K) into the hinge region of the Acceptor, while maintaining the oxidative activity. Interestingly, the signal/background (S/B) ratio of the assay was markedly improved by the addition of coenzyme A and reduction of the ATP concentration, probably due to reduced inhibition by dehydroluciferyl-adenylate formed during the catalysis and an increased ATP-based Km value of the Acceptor, respectively. As a result, a significantly improved maximal S/B ratio from 2.5 to ∼40 was attained, which promises wider use of the assay in in vitro diagnostics, drug discovery, and expanding our knowledge of various biological phenomena.

A protein-protein interaction assay based on the functional complementation of mutant firefly luciferases.

We report a novel bioluminescent protein-protein interaction (PPI) assay, which is based on the functional complementation of two mutant firefly luciferases (Fluc). The chemical reaction catalyzed by Fluc is divided into two half reactions of ATP-driven luciferin adenylation and subsequent oxidative reactions. In the former adenylation half-reaction, a luciferyl-adenylate (LH2-AMP) intermediate is produced from LH2 and ATP. With this intermediate, the latter oxidative reactions produce oxyluciferin via proton abstraction at the C4 carbon of LH2-AMP. We created and optimized two Fluc mutants; one is named "Donor", which virtually lacks oxidative activity, while the other, named "Acceptor", is almost defective in the adenylation activity. Then, the two mutants are fused to interacting partners, and prepared as pure proteins. When the interaction between the partners is induced, higher efficiency of LH2-AMP transfer between the Donor and Acceptor enzymes resulted in increased luminescence. The assay was found to work both in vitro and in cultured cells with strong signals. This would be the first example of reconstituting two divided reactions of one enzyme to detect PPI, which will not only be utilized as a robust PPI assay, but also open a way to control the activity of similar enzymes in acyl/adenylate-forming enzyme superfamily.

Importance of terminal residues on circularly permutated Escherichia coli alkaline phosphatase with high specific activity.

While the construction of fusion or tagged proteins is a useful method to obtain bifunctional proteins such as enzymes with specific binding activities, the region of the protein amenable to the fusion is limited to either the N- or C-terminus of the polypeptide, which often hampers its utility. Here we propose circular permutation as a method for tethering other protein(s) at a site(s) other than the two termini. As the effect of circular permutation on the activity of practically important proteins remains to be established, Escherichia coli alkaline phosphatase was subjected to circular permutation with its novel termini at the loops near the active site, and the original termini were linked by a flexible linker. While a permutant with the termini at original residues 407 and 408 was not active, a permutant with termini at residues 90 and 94 showed significant activity. Also, the addition of a randomized residue at positions 91 and 93 as well as outer peptide epitopes yielded several mutants with specific activity comparable to the wild-type enzyme with similar outer peptides. In addition, the mutants retained specific binding activity to anti-epitope antibodies, showing their potential utility in competitive immunoassay.

The role of firefly luciferase C-terminal domain in efficient coupling of adenylation and oxidative steps.

The N-terminal domain (N-domain) of the firefly luciferase from Photinus pyraris has weak luminescence activity, and shows a unique light emitting profile with very long rise time of more than several minutes. Through a sensitive assay of the reaction intermediate luciferyl-adenylate (LH2-AMP), we found that the slow increase in the N-domain luminescence faithfully reflected the concentration of dissociated LH2-AMP. No such correlation was observed for wild-type or mutant enzymes with short rise time, except one with longer rise time. The results suggest that the C-terminal domain plays an indispensable role in efficiently coupling adenylation and oxidative steps.

Luminescent and substrate binding activities of firefly luciferase N-terminal domain.

Firefly luciferase catalyzes highly efficient emission of light from the substrates luciferin, Mg-ATP, and oxygen. A number of amino acid residues are identified to be important for the luminescent activity, and almost all the key residues are thought to be located in the N-terminal domain (1-437), except one in the C-terminal domain, Lys529, which is thought to be critical for efficient substrate orientation. Here we show that the purified N-terminal domain still binds to the substrates luciferin and ATP with reduced affinity, and retains luminescent activity of up to 0.03% of the wild-type enzyme (WT), indicating that all the essential residues for the activity are located in the N-terminal domain. Also found is low luminescence enhancement by coenzyme A (CoA), which implies a lower product inhibition than in the WT enzyme. These findings have interesting implications for the light emission reaction mechanism of the enzyme, such as reaction intermediates, product inhibition, and the role of the C-terminal domain.