An EPR/HYSCORE, Mössbauer, and resonance Raman study of the hydrogenase maturation enzyme HydF: a model for N-coordination to [4Fe-4S] clusters.
The biosynthesis of the organometallic H cluster of [Fe-Fe] hydrogenase requires three accessory proteins, two of which (HydE and HydG) belong to the radical S-adenosylmethionine enzyme superfamily. The third, HydF, is an Fe-S protein with GTPase activity. The [4Fe-4S] cluster of HydF is bound to the polypeptide chain through only the three, conserved, cysteine residues present in the binding sequence motif CysXHisX(46-53)HisCysXXCys. However, the involvement of the two highly conserved histidines as a fourth ligand for the cluster coordination is controversial. In this study, we set out to characterize further the [4Fe-4S] cluster of HydF using Mössbauer, EPR, hyperfine sublevel correlation (HYSCORE), and resonance Raman spectroscopy in order to investigate the influence of nitrogen ligands on the spectroscopic properties of [4Fe-4S](2+/+) clusters. Our results show that Mössbauer, resonance Raman, and EPR spectroscopy are not able to readily discriminate between the imidazole-coordinated [4Fe-4S] cluster and the non-imidazole-bound [4Fe-4S] cluster with an exchangeable fourth ligand that is present in wild-type HydF. HYSCORE spectroscopy, on the other hand, detects the presence of an imidazole/histidine ligand on the cluster on the basis of the appearance of a specific spectral pattern in the strongly coupled region, with a coupling constant of approximately 6 MHz. We also discovered that a His-tagged version of HydF, with a hexahistidine tag at the N-terminus, has a [4Fe-4S] cluster coordinated by one histidine from the tag. This observation strongly indicates that care has to be taken in the analysis of data obtained on tagged forms of metalloproteins.
Laboratoire de Chimie et Biologie des Métaux, Équipe «Biocatalyse», Institut de Recherches en Technologies et Sciences pour le Vivant, iRTSV-LCBM/Biocat, UMR 5249 CEA/CNRS/UJF, CEA/Grenoble, 17, rue des Martyrs, Grenoble, France.
Gustav
G
Berggren
Ricardo
R
Garcia-Serres
Xavier
X
Brazzolotto
Martin
M
Clemancey
Serge
S
Gambarelli
Mohamed
M
Atta
Jean-Marc
JM
Latour
Heather L
HL
Hernández
Sowmya
S
Subramanian
Michael K
MK
Johnson
Marc
M
Fontecave
D004578:Electron Spin Resonance Spectroscopy; D006639:Histidine / Q000737:chemistry; D006864:Hydrogenase / Q000378:metabolism; D007506:Iron-Sulfur Proteins / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism; D015204:Spectroscopy, Mossbauer; D013059:Spectrum Analysis, Raman; D020124:Thermotoga maritima / Q000737:chemistry / Q000201:enzymology* / Q000378:metabolism
D007506:Iron-Sulfur Proteins; D006639:Histidine; C118830:iron hydrogenase; D006864:Hydrogenase