title: Identification by mutagenesis of conserved arginine and tryptophan residues in rat liver carnitine palmitoyltransferase I important for catalytic activity.
abstract: Carnitine palmitoyltransferase I catalyzes the conversion of long-chain acyl-CoA to acylcarnitines in the presence of l-carnitine. To determine the role of the conserved arginine and tryptophan residues on catalytic activity in the liver isoform of carnitine palmitoyltransferase I (L-CPTI), we separately mutated five conserved arginines and two tryptophans to alanine. Substitution of arginine residues 388, 451, and 606 with alanine resulted in loss of 88, 82, and 93% of L-CPTI activity, respectively. Mutants R601A and R655A showed less than 2% of the wild type L-CPTI activity. A change of tryptophan 391 and 452 to alanine resulted in 50 and 93% loss in carnitine palmitoyltransferase activity, respectively. The mutations caused decreases in catalytic efficiency of 80-98%. The residual activity in the mutant L-CPTIs was sensitive to malonyl-CoA inhibition. Mutants R388A, R451A, R606A, W391A, and W452A had no effect on the K(m) values for carnitine or palmitoyl-CoA. However, these mutations decreased the V(max) values for both substrates by 10-40-fold, suggesting that the main effect of the mutations was to decrease the stability of the enzyme-substrate complex. We suggest that conserved arginine and tryptophan residues in L-CPTI contribute to the stabilization of the enzyme-substrate complex by charge neutralization and hydrophobic interactions. The predicted secondary structure of the 100-amino acid residue region of L-CPTI, containing arginines 388 and 451 and tryptophans 391 and 452, consists of four alpha-helices similar to the known three-dimensional structure of the acyl-CoA-binding protein. We predict that this 100-amino acid residue region constitutes the putative palmitoyl-CoA-binding site in L-CPTI.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Oregon Graduate Institute of Science and Technology, Beaverton, Oregon 97006-8921, USA.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Dai
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Woldegiorgis
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D001120:Arginine; D002334:Carnitine O-Palmitoyltransferase / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D002384:Catalysis; D008099:Liver / Q000201:enzymology*; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D016297:Mutagenesis, Site-Directed; D051381:Rats; D013329:Structure-Activity Relationship; D014364:Tryptophan
chemical_list: D014364:Tryptophan; D001120:Arginine; D002334:Carnitine O-Palmitoyltransferase