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Journal of Bacteriology, July 2003, p. 4144-4151, Vol. 185, No. 14
0021-9193/03/$08.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/JB.185.14.4144-4151.2003
Copyright © 2003, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Syrrx Inc., San Diego, California 92121
Received 10 February 2003/ Accepted 1 May 2003
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/ß motif and an NADPH binding domain with a typical Rossmann fold. The enzyme contains a unique glycine-rich P-loop with a conserved sequence motif, GAGGXX, that results in NADPH adopting a nonstandard binding mode with the nicotinamide and ribose moieties disordered in the binary complex. A deep pocket with a narrow entrance between the two domains, containing strictly conserved residues primarily contributed by the catalytic domain, is identified as a potential 3-dehydroshikimate binding pocket. The flexibility of the nicotinamide mononucleotide portion of NADPH may be necessary for the substrate 3-dehydroshikimate to enter the pocket and for the release of the product shikimate. |
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Seven enzymes of the shikimate pathway catalyze sequential conversion of erythrose 4-phosphate and phosphoenolpyruvate via shikimate to chorismate (1). Shikimate dehydrogenase (EC 1.1.1.25, AroE) is the fourth enzyme in the pathway. It catalyzes the NADPH-dependent reduction of 3-dehydroshikimate to shikimate. The enzyme exists as a component of the pentafunctional arom enzyme complex in fungi and yeasts (6) and is present as a bifunctional enzyme with 3-dehydroquinate dehydratase (AroD) in plants (5), whereas in bacteria it exists as a single monofunctional enzyme (3).
To provide structural information for rational drug discovery, expression and purification of AroE from Mycobacterium tuberculosis (18) and crystallization of AroE from Escherichia coli (17) have been reported. Here we present the crystal structures of AroE from Haemophilus influenzae both in its apo form and in complex with NADPH. These structures provide three-dimensional templates for future efforts towards structure-based inhibitor design.
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10 mg/ml) samples were screened using Syrrx's nanoliter crystallization, a highly parallel sitting drop submicroliter vapor diffusion crystallization technology (26). This technology represents a significant reduction in the sample requirements for structure determination. To generate AroE:NADPH complex, protein samples were incubated with 5 mM NADPH prior to crystallization. Crystals of selenomethionine-substituted apo-AroE were obtained at 4°C in 100-nl sitting drops containing a 1:1 mixture of protein solution with crystallization buffer [1.0 M sodium citrate, 0.1 M 2-(cyclohexylamino)ethanesulfonic acid (CHES), pH 8.8], whereas the crystals of the AroE:NADPH complex were obtained with a different crystallization buffer (12% polyethylene glycol 8000, 0.15 M calcium acetate, 0.1 M imidazole, pH 7.8). The crystals were cryoprotected and harvested in the presence of the same crystallization buffer containing up to 20% (vol/vol) ethylene glycol. A multiple-wavelength anomalous diffraction (MAD) data set of selenomethionine apo-AroE was collected on beamline 5.0.2 (selenium edge with
1 = 0.9786 Å,
2 = 0.9792 Å, and
3 = 0.9537 Å) on a single crystal, to a resolution of 2.4 Å, and a native data set of AroE:NADPH complex was collected on beamline 5.0.3 to 1.95 Å at Advanced Light Source (ALS) (Table 1), with an Area Detector Systems Corp. charge-coupled device detector. Apo-AroE crystals belong to space group P212121 with unit cell dimensions of a = 78.2 Å, b = 86.6 Å, and c = 92.9 Å; two monomers per asymmetric unit; and a solvent content of 51.4%. The AroE:NADPH complex crystals belong to space group C2221 with unit cell dimensions of a = 84.1 Å, b = 82.7 Å, and c = 92.4 Å; one monomer per asymmetric unit; and a solvent content of 46.6%. Reflection data were indexed, integrated, and scaled using MOSFLM/SCALA (7) or HKL2000 (22). |
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TABLE 1. Crystallographic data, phasing, and refinement statistics
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The three-dimensional structure of AroE is illustrated in Fig. 1A. The 272 residues in the AroE molecule form two structural domains: a catalytic domain and an NADPH binding domain. The NADPH binding domain is composed of a contiguous polypeptide chain (residues 119 to 238). This domain is symmetrically built from two halves with identical topology of ß-
-ß-
-ß, together forming a single parallel ß-sheet flanked by
-helices. The domain structure is very similar to those of NAD(P)H binding domains in other dehydrogenases (16), despite the absence of amino acid sequence homology.
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FIG. 1. (A) Ribbon diagram of the AroE:NADPH complex structure. The NADPH binding domain is shown in green at the top, the catalytic domain is shown in red at the bottom, and NADPH is shown in a ball-and-stick representation. (B) Alignment of 12 primary sequences of AroE from 10 bacteria and two archaea. Above the alignment is shown the secondary structure assignment based on the H. influenzae AroE crystal structure; the catalytic domain is shown in red, and the NADPH binding domain is shown in green. The boxes, arrows, and lines correspond to -helices, ß-strands, and loops, respectively. The two cis-peptide prolines are strictly conserved in all 12 sequences and are shown in green and marked with an asterisk. The residues related to NADPH binding are shown in blue. The residues of the glycine-rich P-loop are boxed. The residues forming the potential 3-dehydroshikimate binding pocket are shown in orange and are highly conserved, although not invariant. The sequences were drawn from SWISS-PROT and represent the organisms indicated: AroE_HAEIN, H. influenzae; AroE_HELPY, Helicobacter pylori; AroE_AQUAE, Aquifex aeolicus; AroE_BACSU, Bacillus subtilis; AroE_STAAM, Staphylococcus aureus; AroE_STRPN, Streptococcus pneumoniae; AroE_THEMA, Thermotoga maritima; AroE_ECOLI, E. coli; AroE_PSEAE, Pseudomonas aeruginosa; AroE_NEIGO, Neisseria gonorrhoeae; AroE_METJA, Methanococcus jannaschii; AroE_PYRFU, Pyrococcus furiosus. (C) Hydrophobic interactions between the catalytic domain and NADPH binding domain. The residues involved in interactions are shown in ball-and-stick format. (D) The two molecules in the asymmetric unit of the apo-AroE structure are superimposed on the molecule of AroE:NADPH complex structure. Red, AroE molecule in complex with NADPH; green, AroE molecule A in apo structure; blue, molecule B in apo structure.
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/ß structure with a six-strand central ß-sheet packing against three
-helices (
2,
3, and
4) on one side and four (
1,
5,
10, and
11) on another side. The central ß-sheet is arranged as 2-1-3-5-6-4, with all strands parallel except strand 5. The secondary structure motifs for catalytic domain are arranged as ß1
1ß2
2ß3
3ß4
4ß5ß6
5
10
11. Two cis peptides, Asn9-Pro10 and Ser62-Pro63, are observed in the AroE structure. The two cis-peptide prolines are strictly conserved in AroE sequences (Fig. 1B), and both exist in a sharp turn linking a ß-strand and a following
-helix, suggesting that they are structurally conserved.
The catalytic domain and the NADPH binding domain mainly pack through interdigitated hydrophobic side chains (Fig. 1C). Helix
5 interacts with the strands ß11 and ß10 of the central ß-sheet and helix
6. Helix
4 interacts with helices
6 and
7. The hydrophobic core, formed between the two domains, locks the positions of the two domains relative to one another. Overall, the three independent AroE molecules whose structures were determined (two apo and one NADPH bound) are very similar (Fig. 1D). The main chain atoms superimpose with a root mean square deviation (rmsd) of 0.84, 1.22, and 1.04 Å between the two independent molecules of apo-AroE, molecule A of the apo enzyme and the NADPH complex, and molecule B of the apo enzyme and the NADPH complex, respectively. The conformation of the catalytic domain is more rigid than that of the NADPH binding domain. The rmsd's are 0.55, 0.75, and 0.68 Å between the catalytic domains and 0.98, 1.24, and 0.81 Å between the NADPH binding domains of AroE subunits. The major backbone differences between the apo and NADPH-bound AroE occur in the glycine-rich P-loop linking ß7 and
6, the loop linking ß10 and
8, the loop linking ß11 and
9, helix
9, and helix
11 (Fig. 1D). The conformational changes occurring in the glycine-rich P-loop and in the loop linking ß10 and
8 are a result of NADPH binding.
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FIG.2. (A) Electron density map of NADPH in the AroE:NADPH complex structure. The map was calculated in CCP4 with SIGMAA-weighted coefficients and model-derived phases for diffraction data between 20 and 1.95 Å, contoured at 1.0 . (B) Interactions between NADPH and AroE in the complex. (C) Overlay of NADPH modeled in a more canonical orientation (purple), as exemplified by NADPH-dependent alcohol dehydrogenase (13), onto the structure of the observed NADPH (gold) bound to AroE. Note the 90° turn in the phosphates relative to the more common orientation, radically repositioning the NMN moiety.
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-guanido moiety of R150 stacks with adenine on one side, and A190 forms hydrophobic interactions with adenine on the other side. Among these residues, three of them (N149, R150, and T151) are strictly conserved among AroE sequences (Fig. 1B), suggesting that they may play important roles in coenzyme selectivity.
Second, AroE contains a unique glycine-rich P-loop with a conserved sequence motif GAGGXX (where X is any amino acid), in contrast to the typical GXGXXG motif observed in other dinucleotide binding proteins containing Rossmann folds, such as the short-chain dehydrogenase family (12). The glycine-rich P-loop motif forms a tight turn between the end of the first ß-strand (ß7) and the beginning of the so-called "dinucleotide binding helix" (
6) in the Rossmann fold. In the AroE:NADPH complex structure, the glycine-rich P-loop makes four hydrogen bonds with the NADPH. The main chain N-H of the P2 and P3 residues form two hydrogen bonds with the 3'-hydroxyl of the adenine ribose, and the main chain N-H of the P4 and P5 residues form two hydrogen bonds with the second phosphate (Fig. 2B). One consequence of the geometry formed by the unique glycine-rich P-loop in AroE is that the NMN phosphate makes a 90° bend, whereas in the typical NADPH binding geometry the phosphate is nearly linear (Fig. 2C). The substitution of glycine at position P4 in AroE allows the NMN half of NADPH to adopt this orientation, which is precluded in other dinucleotide binding proteins by the presence of a larger side chain at P4.
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helices 1, 5, and 10 and ß-strands 1, 3, and 5 in the catalytic domain forms the bottom of the pocket. The side wall of the pocket is formed from two ß-hairpin loops (between ß1 and
1 and between ß3 and
3) from the catalytic domain on one side and another ß-hairpin loop between ß11 and
9 from the NADPH binding domain on the other side (Fig. 1A and 3A). The pocket is narrow, with a width of 8 Å, and is approximately 10 Å deep. Sequence alignment analysis of AroE orthologs (Fig. 1B) shows that most of the residues exposed to the pocket (V6, S14, K15, S16, I19, N59, T61, K65, N86, N100, D102, M241, L242, and Q245) are strictly conserved, suggesting that it is a good candidate for the 3-dehydroshikimate binding pocket.
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FIG. 3. (A) The potential 3-dehydroshikimate binding pocket. (B) An approximate model of docking of 3-dehydroshikimate to AroE in the proposed pocket. (C) An approximate model of "ordered" NADPH and 3-dehydroshikimate. Protein surface charge distribution was calculated and displayed by the program GRASP; potentials less than -10 kT, neutral, and greater than 10 kT are displayed in red, white, and blue, respectively. The orientation of the molecule is related to that shown in Fig. 1A.
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In docking the 3-dehydroshikimate, it became apparent that, in the dehydrogenation reaction, the nicotinamide moiety of NADPH is located somewhere close to the entrance of the pocket, as shown in Fig. 3C. Given the narrow entrance of the pocket, this conformation may block, or at least interfere with, entry of the substrate 3-dehydroshikimate to the pocket and with release of the product shikimate. Thus, the flexibility of the NMN portion of NADPH may be necessary for the dehydrogenation reaction. This may explain why the NMN part of NADPH is disordered in the AroE:NADPH complex structure.
The structure of H. influenzae AroE provides the first three-dimensional view of this enzyme. It reveals that AroE is a monomer composed of two domains. The catalytic domain is arranged as a novel fold. The NADPH binding domain has a typical Rossmann fold and a unique glycine-rich P-loop with a conserved sequence motif of GAGGXX. The complex with NADPH allows the identification of residues involved in cofactor binding and specificity. NADPH adopts a unique binding mode with the nicotinamide and ribose moieties disordered in the binary complex. A deep pocket between the two domains lined with strictly conserved residues is identified as the probable 3-dehydroshikimate binding pocket.
All of the enzymes that make up this pathway are potentially targets for the design of novel drugs directed against pathogenic bacteria and the parasites. The structures of AroE are the first steps in efforts to use structural templates for the synthesis of effective inhibitors of the shikimate pathway for biosynthesis of aromatic compounds. Further experiments suggested by the structures may enable the development of new broad-spectrum antimicrobial agents, herbicides, and antiparasitic drugs.
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ALS is supported by the Director, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences Division, of the U.S. Department of Energy under contract no. DE-AC03-76SF00098 at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
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