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Published January 21, 2014 | Supplemental Material + Published
Journal Article Open

Turnover-Dependent Inactivation of the Nitrogenase MoFe-Protein at High pH

Abstract

Proton uptake accompanies the reduction of all known substrates by nitrogenase. As a consequence, a higher pH should limit the availability of protons as a substrate essential for turnover, thereby increasing the proportion of more highly reduced forms of the enzyme for further study. The utility of the high-pH approach would appear to be problematic in view of the observation reported by Pham and Burgess [(1993) Biochemistry 32, 13725–13731] that the MoFe-protein undergoes irreversible protein denaturation above pH 8.65. In contrast, we found by both enzyme activity and crystallographic analyses that the MoFe-protein is stable when incubated at pH 9.5. We did observe, however, that at higher pHs and under turnover conditions, the MoFe-protein is slowly inactivated. While a normal, albeit low, level of substrate reduction occurs under these conditions, the MoFe-protein undergoes a complex transformation; initially, the enzyme is reversibly inhibited for substrate reduction at pH 9.5, yet in a second, slower process, the MoFe-protein becomes irreversibly inactivated as measured by substrate reduction activity at the optimal pH of 7.8. The final inactivated MoFe-protein has an increased hydrodynamic radius compared to that of the native MoFe-protein, yet it has a full complement of iron and molybdenum. Significantly, the modified MoFe-protein retains the ability to specifically interact with its nitrogenase partner, the Fe-protein, as judged by the support of ATP hydrolysis and by formation of a tight complex with the Fe-protein in the presence of ATP and aluminum fluoride. The turnover-dependent inactivation coupled to conformational change suggests a mechanism-based transformation that may provide a new probe of nitrogenase catalysis.

Additional Information

© 2013 American Chemical Society. Received: October 30, 2013; Revised: December 12, 2013. Publication Date (Web): December 24, 2013. The assistance of Dr. Jens Kaiser and Dr. Nathan Dalleska is appreciated. We acknowledge the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Beckman Institute, and the Sanofi−Aventis Bioengineering Research Program at Caltech for their generous support of the Molecular Observatory at Caltech. This project benefited from the use of instrumentation made available by the Caltech Environmental Analysis Center. Portions of this research were conducted at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL), a Directorate of SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and an Office of Science User Facility operated for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science by Stanford University. The SSRL Structural Molecular Biology Program is supported by the Department of Energy Office of Biological and Environmental Research and by the National Institutes of Health, National Center for Research Resources, Biomedical Technology Program (P41RR001209), and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences.

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Supplemental Material - bi4014769_si_001.pdf

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August 19, 2023
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October 25, 2023