title: Hirudin: amino-terminal residues play a major role in the interaction with thrombin.
abstract: Amino acid substitutions within the amino-terminal 5 residues of the thrombin-specific inhibitor hirudin dramatically alter its ability to inhibit the thrombin-catalyzed hydrolysis of both a chromogenic substrate and fibrinogen. Replacing the highly conserved Tyr-3 residue with Trp or Phe increases hirudin's affinity for thrombin 3-6-fold (decreases the inhibition constant, Ki) whereas Thr results in a 450-fold increase in Ki. A more extensive modification involving deletion of the amino-terminal Val, and Tyr-3----Val, Thr-4----Gln, and Asp-5----Ile replacement, results in a large reduction in thrombin inhibitory activity corresponding to greater than a 10(7)-fold increase in Ki and a 10(3)-fold increase in IC50, using D-Phe-L-pipecolyl-Arg-p-nitroanilide (S-2238) and fibrinogen, respectively, as substrates. Kinetic analysis of these mutant proteins and synthetic peptide fragments and available structural information on thrombin and hirudin derived from protein crystallography and two-dimensional NMR studies indicate that the amino-terminal region of hirudin binds at the apolar binding/active site region of thrombin, with Tyr-3 occupying the S3 specificity site. The large effect of these modifications on hirudin activity suggests that alteration of the amino-terminal segment can destabilize the interaction of other regions of hirudin with thrombin.
authors.affiliation: Molecular Biology Department, SRI International, Menlo Park, California 94025.
authors.forename: J B
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Lazar
authors.forename: R C
authors.initials: RC
authors.lastname: Winant
authors.forename: P H
authors.initials: PH
authors.lastname: Johnson
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D006629:Hirudins / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D008958:Models, Molecular; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009154:Mutation; D011487:Protein Conformation; D013917:Thrombin / Q000378:metabolism*
chemical_list: D006629:Hirudins; D013917:Thrombin