title: Structural and functional roles of cysteine 90 and cysteine 240 in S-adenosylmethionine synthetase.
abstract: Site-specific mutagenesis was performed on the structural gene for Escherichia coli S-adenosylmethionine (AdoMet) synthetase to introduce mutations at cysteines 90 and 240, residues previously implicated by chemical modification studies to be catalytically and/or structurally important. The AdoMet synthetase mutants (i.e. MetK/C90A, MetK/C90S, and MetK/C240A) retained up to approximately 10% of wild type activity, demonstrating that neither sulfhydryl is required for catalytic activity. Mutations at Cys-90 produced a mixture of noninterconverting dimeric and tetrameric proteins, suggesting a structural significance for Cys-90. Dimeric Cys-90 mutants retained approximately 1% of wild type activity, indicating a structural influence on enzyme activity. Both dimeric and tetrameric MetK/C90A had up to a approximately 70-fold increase in Km for ATP, while both dimeric and tetrameric MetK/C90S had Km values for ATP similar to the wild type enzyme, suggesting a linkage between Cys-90 and the ATP binding site. MetK/C240A was isolated solely as a tetramer and differed from wild type enzyme only in its 10-fold reduction in specific activity, suggesting that the mutation affects the rate-limiting step of the reaction, which for the wild type enzyme is the joining of ATP and L-methionine to yield AdoMet and tripolyphosphate. Remarkably all of the mutants are much more thermally stable than the wild type enzyme.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Cancer Research, Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19111, USA.
authors.forename: R S
authors.initials: RS
authors.lastname: Reczkowski
authors.forename: G D
authors.initials: GD
authors.lastname: Markham
mesh_terms: D000255:Adenosine Triphosphate / Q000378:metabolism; D003545:Cysteine / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D004591:Electrophoresis, Polyacrylamide Gel; D004795:Enzyme Stability; D004926:Escherichia coli / Q000201:enzymology* / Q000235:genetics; D007700:Kinetics; D008715:Methionine / Q000378:metabolism; D008716:Methionine Adenosyltransferase / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification / Q000378:metabolism*; D008970:Molecular Weight; D016297:Mutagenesis, Site-Directed; D009154:Mutation; D011487:Protein Conformation; D013329:Structure-Activity Relationship
chemical_list: D000255:Adenosine Triphosphate; D008715:Methionine; D008716:Methionine Adenosyltransferase; D003545:Cysteine