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Journal of Bacteriology, February 2007, p. 1176-1178, Vol. 189, No. 3
0021-9193/07/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/JB.01628-06
Copyright © 2007, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Role of Phosphoenolpyruvate in the NADP-Isocitrate Dehydrogenase and Isocitrate Lyase Reaction in Escherichia coli
Tadashi Ogawa,1
Keiko Murakami,1
Hirotada Mori,2,3
Nobuyoshi Ishii,2
Masaru Tomita,2 and
Masataka Yoshin1,2*
Department of Biochemistry, Aichi Medical University School of Medicine, Nagakute, Aichi 480-1195,1
Institute for Advanced Biosciences, Keio University, Tsuruoka, Yamagata 997-0035,2
Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Ikoma, Nara 630-0101, Japan3
Received 20 October 2006/
Accepted 15 November 2006

ABSTRACT
Phosphoenolpyruvate inhibited
Escherichia coli NADP-isocitrate
dehydrogenase allosterically (
Ki of 0.31 mM) and isocitrate
lyase uncompetitively (
Ki' of 0.893 mM). Phosphoenolpyruvate
enhances the uncompetitive inhibition of isocitrate lyase by
increasing isocitrate, which protects isocitrate dehydrogenase
from the inhibition, and contributes to the control through
the tricarboxylic acid cycle and glyoxylate shunt.

TEXT
Phosphoenolpyruvate (PEP) is a critical metabolite in
Escherichia coli, because it is essential for the efficient uptake of glucose
and other carbohydrates (
11) and the final intermediate of glycolysis.
PEP acts as an effector of phosphofructokinase (
1), and changes
in the PEP concentration are related to the flux of the tricarboxylic
acid (TCA) cycle and glyoxylate shunt (
10,
13). The branch point
at the TCA cycle and glyoxylate bypass is controlled by enzyme
expression and depends on the growth conditions (
16) and the
NADP-isocitrate dehydrogenase activity (
12), which is subject
to inhibition by various metal ions (
7,
14,
15) and phosphorylation/dephosphorylation
of the protein (
2,
9,
12). Here we report the inhibitory effects
of PEP on the NADP-isocitrate dehydrogenase and isocitrate lyase
purified from the archived clones of the
icd- and
aceA-overexpressing
E. coli mutants (
8), which were constructed with plasmid pCA24N
from the
E. coli strain K-12 W3110 (
4).
The effect of PEP on the activity of NADP-isocitrate dehydrogenase was analyzed. The 1-ml reaction mixture contained 100 mM morpholinepropanesulfonic acid (MOPS) buffer (pH 7.1), 0.5 mM NADP, 0.5 mM MgCl2, and various concentrations of threo-DS-isocitrate in the absence and presence of phosphoenolpyruvate, and the activity was determined by monitoring the change in the absorbance at 340 nm (7, 8). Plots of reaction velocity as a function of the substrate isocitrate concentration gave a hyperbolic curve, which became sigmoid in shape with the addition of PEP (Fig. 1A). The substrate concentration required for half-maximal velocity, S0.5 of 0.029 mM, increased to a value over 0.1 mM, and the Hill's interaction coefficient nH of 1.0 increased to 1.2 in the presence of 5 mM PEP (Fig. 1B). It was concluded that PEP acts as an allosteric inhibitor.
Plots of the reaction velocity against PEP concentration gave
a sigmoid curve in the presence of higher substrate concentration,
suggesting the cooperative binding of PEP to the enzyme (Fig.
2A). This allosteric system lends itself to the convenient method
of analysis of Blangy et al. (
1) using a function called the
quotient function (
Q), which is the ratio of the amount of the
enzyme in the
R state to that in the
T state. We may write
Q =
R/(1
R) =
v/(
V'
v) =
C/(1 + ß)
n where
R represents the fraction of the enzyme molecules in the
R (active) conformation and
v is the velocity obtained in the
presence of the inhibitor.
V' is the maximum velocity that can
be reached in the presence of a given concentration of the substrate
if the protein is entirely in the
R conformation, and ß
is the normalized concentration of the inhibitor, that is, [
I]/
KT where
KT is the microscopic dissociation constant of the inhibitor
for the
T (inactive) state of the enzyme.
C is the constant
including the normalized
Km and the allosteric constant, which
is the ratio of the
R and
T states in the absence of any ligand.
It is, therefore, convenient to plot
n
(
V'
v)/
v against
PEP concentration, assuming that there are two independent sites
for PEP per enzyme molecule in the
T conformation. As shown
in Fig.
2B, all the inhibition curves were converted to the
straight lines converging on the abscissa at the same point,
KT. This implies that there are indeed two independent
sites for PEP per molecule, and the
KT for PEP, that is, the
Ki value, was calculated to be 0.31 mM. If a number of sites
other than two is assumed for PEP, the functions deviate from
linearity and do not meet on the abscissa at the same point.
Thus, the most probable number of sites for PEP is two.
We examined the effect of PEP on isocitrate lyase activity by
the phenylhydrazine method by measuring at 324 nm (
5): the 1-ml
reaction mixture contained 100 mM potassium phosphate buffer
(pH 7.1), 10 mM MgCl
2, 12 mM cysteine, various concentrations
of
threo-
DS-isocitrate, and 4 mM phenylhydrazine-HCl in the
absence and presence of PEP. PEP inhibited isocitrate lyase
(Fig.
3A), and the Hofstee plot revealed that the inhibition
was of the uncompetitive type with the
Ki' value for PEP of
0.893 ± 0.097 mM (Fig.
3B). The inhibition constants
of isocitrate dehydrogenase and isocitrate lyase for PEP are
within the intracellular PEP concentration range from 0.2 to
1.0 mM, depending on carbon sources (
6), suggesting that inhibition
by PEP is physiologically relevant.
The
Km value of NADP-isocitrate dehydrogenase for isocitrate
(
Km = 0.029 mM) is much lower than that of isocitrate lyase
(
Km = 0.89 mM). Isocitrate dehydrogenase is, thus, less sensitive
to the availability of isocitrate, as the enzyme operates largely
in the zero-order region (i.e., the concentration of isocitrate
is greater than the
Km), but the glyoxylate pathway operates
at low flux in
E. coli cells, in which isocitrate concentration
is below the
Km of isocitrate lyase. Flux of the glyoxylate
shunt largely depends on the inactivation/phosphorylation of
isocitrate dehydrogenase catalyzed by isocitrate dehydrogenase
kinase/phosphatase (
12) and the stimulation of isocitrate lyase
(
3). Inactivation of isocitrate dehydrogenase causes the possible
enhancement of isocitrate lyase by increasing isocitrate concentrations.
For example, when the
pck gene encoding phosphoenolpyruvate
carboxykinase is deleted, isocitrate lyase increased the activity
of isocitrate dehydrogenase twofold, which decreases the activity
to 16 to 17% of the wild-type cells (
13), and thus, a larger
portion of isocitrate is expected to be metabolized through
the glyoxylate shunt. However, the glyoxylate shunt activity
is only one-third of the flux of the isocitrate dehydrogenase
pathway in the
pck deletion mutant (
13).
PEP may participate in the control of glyoxylate bypass and the TCA cycle. Increased PEP concentrations in pck knockout cells cause inhibition of NADP-isocitrate dehydrogenase, but the resulting accumulation of isocitrate can relieve the enzyme from allosteric inhibition by PEP. On the other hand, isocitrate lyase is subject to uncompetitive inhibition by PEP, and an increase in the concentration of the substrate, isocitrate, will further enhance the inhibition by PEP, because the inhibitor binds only to the enzyme-substrate complex. Lower flux of glyoxylate shunt, in spite of increased induction of isocitrate lyase in cells with higher PEP concentrations, can be explained by the differential inhibitory effects of PEP on isocitrate dehydrogenase and isocitrate lyase, as well as the inhibition of isocitrate dehydrogenase kinase that protects isocitrate dehydrogenase from inactivation (9).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research was carried out as a part of The Project for Development
of a Technological Infrastructure for Industrial Bioprocesses
on R&D of New Industrial Science and Technology Frontiers
by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and entrusted
by New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization
(NEDO). This work was also supported in part by a grant for
The 21st Century COE Program "Understanding and Control of Life's
Function via Systems Biology" from The Ministry of Education,
Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT).

FOOTNOTES
* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of Biochemistry, Aichi Medical University School of Medicine, Aichi 489-1195, Japan. Phone: 81-52-264-4811. Fax: 81-561-61-4056. E-mail:
yoshino{at}aichi-med-u.ac.jp.

Published ahead of print on 1 December 2006. 

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Journal of Bacteriology, February 2007, p. 1176-1178, Vol. 189, No. 3
0021-9193/07/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/JB.01628-06
Copyright © 2007, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.