J. Biol. Chem., Vol. 268, Issue 32, 24149-24155, 11, 1993
Evidence for a catalytic role of glutamic acid 129 in the NAD- glycohydrolase activity of the pertussis toxin S1 subunit
R Antoine, A Tallett, S van Heyningen and C Locht
Laboratoire de Microbiologie Genetique et Moleculaire, Institut National de la Sante et de la Recherche Medicale CJF9109, Institut Pasteur de Lille, France.
The S1 subunit of pertussis toxin is an ADP-ribosyl-transferase capable of
transferring the ADP-ribose moiety of NAD+ to nucleotide-binding
signal-transducing proteins of the Gi/G(o) family. In the absence of G
proteins, the enzyme also catalyzes the hydrolysis of NAD+. Glu-129 was
previously shown to be critical for both enzymatic activities. In this
study, site-directed mutagenesis was used to make the conservative
substitution of aspartate for Glu-129. The recombinant wild type and mutant
proteins were purified to near homogeneity and used for enzymatic analyses.
Kinetic experiments showed that the kcat of the mutant protein was about
200 times less than that of the wild type enzyme, whereas the Km for NAD+
of the two proteins were very similar, suggesting that Glu-129 is a
catalytic residue for the NAD- glycohydrolase reaction of S1. This
hypothesis was confirmed by a less than 2-fold change in Kd as measured by
fluorescence quenching studies, indicating that the binding of NAD+ is not
affected in the mutant protein in any important way. In another experiment,
the replacement of Glu-129 by cysteine resulted in a disulfide bridge
between Cys-129 and Cys-41 in rS1d-E129C, suggesting that the folding of
the polypeptide chain is such that the catalytic Glu-129 residue is close
to the amino- terminal NAD-binding site of S1. These findings imply that
Glu-129 plays a key role in catalysis of the NAD-glycohydrolase reaction,
possibly by electrostatically stabilizing a cationic transition state
intermediate, or by serving as a general base to deprotonate the ADP-
ribosyl acceptor substrates.