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J. Biol. Chem., Vol. 281, Issue 23, 15680-15686, June 9, 2006

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The MurE Synthetase from Thermotoga maritima Is Endowed with an Unusual D-Lysine Adding Activity^*

From the Laboratory of Bacterial Envelopes and Antibiotics, Institut de Biochimie et Biophysique Moléculaire et Cellulaire, UMR 8619 CNRS, Université Paris-Sud, 91405 Orsay, France

The peptidoglycan of Thermotoga maritima, an extremely thermophilic eubacterium, was shown to contain no diaminopimelic acid and approximate amounts of both enantiomers of lysine (Huber, R., Langworthy, T. A., König, H., Thomm, M., Woese, C. R., Sleytr, U. B., and Stetter, K. O. (1986) Arch. Microbiol. 144, 324–333). To assess the possible involvement of the MurE activity in the incorporation of D-lysine, the murE gene from this organism was cloned in Escherichia coli, and the corresponding protein was purified as the C-terminal His₆-tagged form. In vitro assays showed that D-lysine and meso-diaminopimelic acid were added to UDP-N-acetylmuramoyl-dipeptide with 25 and 10% efficiencies, respectively, relative to L-lysine. The purified enzyme was used to synthesize the L- and D-lysine-containing UDP-N-acetylmuramoyl-tripeptides; chemical analysis revealed an unusual structure for the D-lysine-containing nucleotide, namely acylation of the -amino function of D-lysine by the D-glutamyl residue. In vitro assays with MurF and MraY enzymes from T. maritima showed that this novel nucleotide was not a substrate for MurF but that it could be directly processed into tripeptide lipid I by MraY, thereby substantiating the role of MurE in the incorporation of D-lysine into peptidoglycan.

Received for publication, June 9, 2005 , and in revised form, April 3, 2006.

^* This work was supported by CNRS Grant UMR 8619 and the European Union Grant LSHM-CT-2004-512138 of the EUR-INTAFAR project. The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. This article must therefore be hereby marked "advertisement" in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.

¹ Recipient of Contrat Jeune Chercheur 036000104 from the Délégation Générale pour l'Armement.

² To whom correspondence should be addressed: Enveloppes Bactériennes et Antibiotiques, IBBMC, UMR 8619 CNRS, Bâtiment 430, Université Paris-Sud, 91405 Orsay, France. Tel.: 33-1-69-15-81-65; Fax: 33-1-69-85-37-15; E-mail: didier.blanot{at}ebp.u-psud.fr.

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				M. Herve, A. Boniface, S. Gobec, D. Blanot, and D. Mengin-Lecreulx Biochemical Characterization and Physiological Properties of Escherichia coli UDP-N-Acetylmuramate:L-Alanyl-{gamma}-D-Glutamyl-meso- Diaminopimelate Ligase J. Bacteriol., June 1, 2007; 189(11): 3987 - 3995. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]