title: Leishmania pyruvate kinase: the crystal structure reveals the structural basis of its unique regulatory properties.
abstract: Glycolysis occupies a central role in cellular metabolism, and is of particular importance for the catabolic production of ATP in protozoan parasites such as Leishmania and Trypanosoma. In these organisms pyruvate kinase plays a key regulatory role, and is unique in responding to fructose 2,6-bisphosphate as allosteric activator. The determination of the crystal structure of the first eukaryotic pyruvate kinase in the T-state (the inactive or 'tense' conformation of allosteric enzymes) is described. A comparison of the effector sites of the Leishmania and yeast enzymes reveals the structural basis for the different effector specificity. Two loops, comprising residues 443-453 and 480-489, adopt very different conformations in the two enzymes, and Lys-453 and His-480 that are a feature of trypanosomatid enzymes provide probable ligands for the 2-phospho group of the effector molecule. These and other differences offer an opportunity for the design of drugs that would exploit regulatory differences between parasite and host.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of Edinburgh, UK.
authors.forename: L A
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Fothergill-Gillmore
authors.forename: D J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Rigden
authors.forename: P A
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Michels
authors.forename: S E
authors.initials: SE
authors.lastname: Phillips
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D018360:Crystallography, X-Ray; D006801:Humans; D007891:Leishmania / Q000201:enzymology*; D008958:Models, Molecular; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D011487:Protein Conformation; D011770:Pyruvate Kinase / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000502:physiology*; D011817:Rabbits; D012441:Saccharomyces cerevisiae / Q000201:enzymology; D017386:Sequence Homology, Amino Acid
chemical_list: D011770:Pyruvate Kinase