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Unique Presence of a Manganese Catalase in a Hyperthermophilic Archaeon, Pyrobaculum calidifontis VA1

Department of Synthetic Chemistry and Biological Chemistry, Graduate School of Engineering, Kyoto University, Yoshida-Honmachi, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8501, and Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology Program of Japan Science and Technology Corporation (CREST-JST), Kawaguchi, Saitama 332-0012, Japan

Received 19 December 2001/ Accepted 26 March 2002

We had previously isolated a facultatively anaerobic hyperthermophilic archaeon, Pyrobaculum calidifontis strain VA1. Here, we found that strain VA1, when grown under aerobic conditions, harbors high catalase activity. The catalase was purified 91-fold from crude extracts and displayed a specific activity of 23,500 U/mg at 70°C. The enzyme exhibited a K_m value of 170 mM toward H₂O₂ and a k_cat value of 2.9 x 10⁴ s^-1·subunit^-1 at 25°C. Gel filtration chromatography indicated that the enzyme was a homotetramer with a subunit molecular mass of 33,450 Da. The purified catalase did not display the Soret band, which is an absorption band particular to heme enzymes. In contrast to typical heme catalases, the catalase was not strongly inhibited by sodium azide. Furthermore, with plasma emission spectroscopy, we found that the catalase did not contain iron but instead contained manganese. Our biochemical results indicated that the purified catalase was not a heme catalase but a manganese (nonheme) catalase, the first example in archaea. Intracellular catalase activity decreased when cells were grown anaerobically, while under aerobic conditions, an increase in activity was observed with the removal of thiosulfate from the medium, or addition of manganese. Based on the N-terminal amino acid sequence of the purified protein, we cloned and sequenced the catalase gene (kat_Pc). The deduced amino acid sequence showed similarity with that of the manganese catalase from a thermophilic bacterium, Thermus sp. YS 8-13. Interestingly, in the complete archaeal genome sequences, no open reading frame has been assigned as a manganese catalase gene. Moreover, a homology search with the sequence of kat_Pc revealed that no orthologue genes were present on the archaeal genomes, including those from the "aerobic" (hyper)thermophilic archaea Aeropyrum pernix, Sulfolobus solfataricus, and Sulfolobus tokodaii. Therefore, Kat_Pc can be considered a rare example of a manganese catalase from archaea.

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