These tools will no longer be maintained as of December 31, 2024. Archived website can be found here. PubMed4Hh GitHub repository can be found here. Contact NLM Customer Service if you have questions.


PUBMED FOR HANDHELDS

Search MEDLINE/PubMed


  • Title: Role of the active site cysteine of DpgA, a bacterial type III polyketide synthase.
    Author: Tseng CC, McLoughlin SM, Kelleher NL, Walsh CT.
    Journal: Biochemistry; 2004 Feb 03; 43(4):970-80. PubMed ID: 14744141.
    Abstract:
    DpgA is a bacterial type III polyketide synthase (PKS) that decarboxylates and condenses four malonyl-CoA molecules to produce 3,5-dihydroxyphenylacetyl-CoA (DPA-CoA) in the biosynthetic pathway to 3,5-dihydroxyphenylglycine, a key nonproteinogenic residue in the vancomycin family of antibiotics. DpgA has the conserved catalytic triad of Cys/His/Asn typical of type III PKS enzymes, and has been assumed to use Cys160 as the catalytic nucleophile to create a series of elongating acyl-S-enzyme intermediates prior to the C(8) to C(3) cyclization step. Incubation of purified DpgA with [(14)C]-malonyl-CoA followed by acid quench during turnover leads to accumulation of 10-15% of the DpgA molecules covalently acylated. Mutation of the active site Cys160 to Ala abrogated detectable covalent acylation, but the C160A mutant retained 50% of the V(max) for DPA-CoA formation, with a k(cat) still at 0.5 catalytic turnovers/min. For comparison, a C190A mutant retained wild-type activity, while the H296A mutant, in which the side chain of the presumed catalytic His is removed, had a 6-fold drop in k(cat). During turnover, purified DpgA produced 1.2 equivalents of acetyl-CoA for each DPA-CoA, indicating 23% uncoupled decarboxylation competing with condensative C-C coupling. The C160A mutant showed an increased partition ratio for malonyl-CoA decarboxylation to acetyl-CoA vs condensation to DPA-CoA, reflecting more uncoupling in the mutant enzyme. The Cys-to-Ala mutant thus shows the unexpected result that, when the normal acyl-S-enzyme mechanism for this type III PKS elongation/cyclization catalyst is removed, it can still carry out the regioselective construction of the eight-carbon DPA-CoA skeleton with surprising efficiency.
    [Abstract] [Full Text] [Related] [New Search]