J. Biol. Chem., Vol. 267, Issue 31, 22217-22223, Nov, 1992
Selenomethionyl dihydrofolate reductase from Escherichia coli. Comparative biochemistry and 77Se nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy
JO Boles, WH Tolleson, JC Schmidt, RB Dunlap and JD Odom
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of South Carolina, Columbia 29208.
The biosynthetic replacement of Met residues by selenomethionine (SeMet)
facilitates the determination of three-dimensional structure by
multiwavelength anomalous diffraction (Yang, W., Hendrickson, W. A.,
Crouch, R.J., and Satow, Y. (1990) Science 249, 1398-1405). In an effort to
examine any biochemical effects due to the replacement of Met residues by
SeMet, we chose to compare the kinetic and binding properties of
selenomethionyl dihydrofolate reductase with those of the wt enzyme. There
are 5 Met residues in Escherichia coli dihydrofolate reductase with 2
located in the Met-20 loop, which is a sequence of residues forming a lid
over the active site. Utilizing plasmid pWT8, which affords 10-15% soluble
protein as E. coli dihydrofolate reductase, we readily isolated both the
SeMet and wt enzymes from E. coli DL41 utilizing a novel purification
protocol. Both enzymes exhibited essentially the same kinetic and binding
properties, including specific activities (45 mumol/min/mg), Km
(7,8-dihydrofolate = 0.39 microM; NADPH = 2.0 microM), kcat (13.5/s), and
1:1 noncovalent inhibitory binding ratios with methotrexate. The inhibitory
effects of divalent and monovalent cations on activity were also assessed,
with the SeMet-containing enzyme exhibiting a uniformly greater sensitivity
than the wt enzyme. We conclude that the biochemical properties of
dihydrofolate reductase are virtually unperturbed by SeMet inclusion.
Analysis of SeMet dihydrofolate reductase by 77Se nuclear magnetic
resonance spectroscopy revealed five distinct resonances, thus indicating
the potential value of this technique in employing selenium as a
nonperturbing NMR probe of protein structure and function.