Unmasking a Functional Allosteric Domain in an Allosterically
Nonresponsive Carbamoyl-phosphate Synthetase*
Binnur
Eroglu and
Susan G.
Powers-Lee
From the Department of Biology, Northeastern University,
Boston, Massachusetts 02115
Although carbamoyl-phosphate synthetases (CPSs)
share sequence identity, multidomain structure, and reaction
mechanism, they have varying physiological roles and allosteric
effectors. Escherichia coli CPS (eCPS) provides CP for both
arginine and pyrimidine nucleotide biosynthesis and is allosterically
regulated by metabolites from both pathways, with inhibition by UMP and
activation by IMP and ornithine. The arginine-specific CPS from
Saccharomyces cerevisiae (sCPS), however, apparently
responds to no allosteric effectors. We have designed and analyzed a
chimeric CPS (chCPS, in which the C-terminal 136 residues of eCPS were
replaced by the corresponding residues of sCPS) to define the
structural basis for the allosteric nonresponsiveness of sCPS and
thereby provide insight into the mechanism for allosteric selectivity
and responsiveness in the other CPSs. Surprisingly, ornithine and UMP
each had a significant effect on chCPS activity, and did so at
concentrations that were similar to those effective for eCPS. We
further found that sCPS bound both UMP and IMP and that chCPS bound
IMP, although none of these interactions led to changes in enzymatic
activity. These findings strongly suggest that the nonresponsive sCPS
is not able to communicate occupancy of the allosteric site to the
active site but does contain a latent allosteric interaction domain.
*
This work was supported by National Institutes of Health
Grant DK54423.The costs of publication of this
article were defrayed in part by the
payment of page charges. The article
must therefore be hereby marked
"advertisement" in
accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section
1734 solely to indicate this fact.