Mammalian thioredoxin reductase (TR) contains a rare selenocysteine (Sec) residue in a conserved redox active tetrapeptide of sequence Gly-Cys1-Sec2-Gly. The high chemical reactivity of the Sec residue is thought to confer broad substrate specificity to the enzyme. In addition to utilizing thioredoxin (Trx) as a substrate, other substrates are: protein disulfide isomerase, glutaredoxin, glutathione peroxidase, NK-lysin/granulsin, HIV Tat protein, H2O2, lipid hydroperoxides, vitamin K, ubiquinone, juglone, ninhydrin, alloxan, dehydroascorbate, DTNB, lipoic acid/lipoamide, S-nitrosoglutathione, selenodiglutathione, selenite, methylseleninate, and selenocystine. Here we show that the Cys2-mutant enzyme or the N- terminal reaction center alone can reduce Se-containing substrates selenocystine and selenite with only slightly less activity than the wild type enzyme, in stark contrast to when Trx is used as the substrate when the enzyme suffers a 175- to 550-fold reduction in kcat. Our data supports the use of alternative mechanistic pathways for the Se-containing substrates that bypass a critical ring-forming step when Trx is the substrate. We also show that lipoic acid can be reduced through a Sec-independent mechanism that involves the N-terminal reaction center. These results show that the broad substrate specificity of the mammalian enzyme is not due to the presence of the rare Sec residue, but is due to the catalytic power of the N-terminal reaction center. We hypothesize that the N-terminal reaction center can reduce substrates: (i) with good leaving groups such as DTNB, (ii) that are highly electrophilic such as selenite, (iii) or are activated by strain such as lipoic acid/lipoamide. We also show that the absence of Sec only changed the IC50 for aurothioglucose by a factor of 1.7 in the full-length mammalian enzyme (83 nM to 142 nM), but surprisingly the truncated enzyme showed much stronger inhibition (25 nM). This contrasts with auranofin, where the absence of Sec more strongly perturbed inhibition.
Post-translational modifications (PTMs) occur on nearly all proteins. Many domains within proteins are modified on multiple amino acid sidechains by diverse enzymes to create a myriad of possible protein species. How these combinations of PTMs lead to distinct biological outcomes is only beginning to be understood. This manuscript highlights several examples of combinatorial PTMs in proteins, and describes recent technological developments, which are driving our ability to understand how PTM patterns may “code” for biological outcomes.
High-molecular weight thioredoxin reductases (TRs) catalyze the reduction of the redox-active disulfide bond of thioredoxin, but an important difference in the TR family is the sequence of the C-terminal redox-active tetrapeptide that interacts directly with thioredoxin, especially the presence or absence of a selenocysteine (Sec) residue in this tetrapeptide. In this study, we have employed protein engineering techniques to investigate the C-terminal redox-active tetrapeptides of three different TRs: mouse mitochondrial TR (mTR3), Drosophila melanogaster TR (DmTR), and the mitochondrial TR from Caenorhabditis elegans (CeTR2), which have C-terminal tetrapeptide sequences of Gly-Cys-Sec-Gly, Ser-Cys-Cys-Ser, and Gly-Cys-Cys-Gly, respectively. Three different types of mutations and chemical modifications were performed in this study: insertion of alanine residues between the cysteine residues of the Cys-Cys or Cys-Sec dyads, modification of the charge at the C-terminus, and altering the position of the Sec residue in the mammalian enzyme. The results show that mTR3 is quite accommodating to insertion of alanine residues into the Cys-Sec dyad, with only a 4-6-fold drop in catalytic activity. In contrast, the activity of both DmTR and CeTR2 was reduced 100-300-fold when alanine residues were inserted into the Cys-Cys dyad. We have tested the importance of a salt bridge between the C-terminus and a basic residue that was proposed for orienting the Cys-Sec dyad of mTR3 for proper catalytic position by changing the C-terminal carboxylate to a carboxamide. The result is an enzyme with twice the activity as the wild-type mammalian enzyme. A similar result was achieved when the C-terminal carboxylate of DmTR was converted to a hydroxamic acid or a thiocarboxylate. Last, reversing the positions of the Cys and Sec residues in the catalytic dyad resulted in a 100-fold loss of catalytic activity. Taken together, the results support our previous model of Sec as the leaving group during reduction of the C-terminus during the catalytic cycle.
Mammalian thioredoxin reductase (TR) is a pyridine nucleotide disulfide oxidoreductase that uses the rare amino acid selenocysteine (Sec) in place of the more commonly used amino acid cysteine (Cys) in the redoxactive tetrapeptide Gly-Cys-Sec-Gly motif to catalyze thiol/disulfide exchange reactions. Sec can accelerate the rate of these exchange reactions by being: (i) a better nucleophile than Cys, (ii) a better electrophile than Cys, (iii) a better leaving group than Cys, or (iv) by using a combination of all three of these factors, being more chemically reactive than Cys. The role of the selenolate as a nucleophile in the reaction mechanism was recently demonstrated by creating a mutant of human thioredoxin reductase-1 in which the Cys497-Sec498 dyad of the C-terminal redox center was mutated to either a Ser497-Cys498 dyad or a Cys497-Ser498 dyad. Both mutant enzymes were incubated with human thioredoxin (Trx) in order to determine which mutant formed a mixed disulfide bond complex. Only the mutant containing the Ser497-Cys498 dyad formed a complex and this structure has been solved by X-ray crystallography [Fritz-Wolf, K., Kehr, S., Stumpf, M., Rahlfs, S., and Becker, K. (2011) Crystal structure of the human thioredoxin reductase-thioredoxin complex, Nat Commun 2, 383.] This experimental observation most likely means that the selenolate is the initial attacking nucleophile onto the disulfide bond of Trx because a complex only resulted when Cys was present in the second position of the dyad. As a nucleophile, the selenolate of Sec helps to accelerate the rate of this exchange reaction relative to Cys in the Sec → Cys mutant enzyme. Another thiol/disulfide exchange reaction that occurs in the enzymatic cycle of the enzyme is the transfer of electrons from the thiolate of the interchange Cys residue of the N-terminal redox center to the 8-membered selenosulfide ring of the C-terminal redox center. The selenium atom of the selenosulfide could accelerate this exchange reaction by being a good leaving group (attack at the sulfur atom), or by being a good electrophile (attack at the selenium atom). Here we provide strong evidence that the selenium atom is attacked in this exchange step. This was shown by creating a mutant enzyme containing a Gly-Gly-Seccoo- motif that had 0.5% of the activity of the wild type enzyme. This mutant lacks the adjacent, resolving Cys residue, which acts by attacking the mixed selenosulfide bond that occurs between enzyme and substrate. A similar result was obtained when Sec was replaced with homocysteine. These results highlight the role of selenium as an electron acceptor in the catalytic mechanism of thioredoxin reductase as well as its established role as an electron donor to the substrate.
Cytosolic thioredoxin reductase 1 is the best characterized of the class of high molecular weight (Mr) thioredoxin reductases (TRs). TR1 is highly dependent upon the rare amino acid selenocysteine (Sec) for the reduction of thioredoxin (Trx) and a host of small molecule substrates, as mutation of Sec to cysteine (Cys) results in large drop in catalytic activity for all substrate types. Previous work in our lab and others has shown that the mitochondrial TR (TR3) is much less dependent upon the use of Sec for the reduction of small molecules. Sec-dependent substrate utilization behavior of TR1 may be the exception and not the rule as we show that a variety of high Mr TRs from other organisms including D. melanogaster, C. elegans, and P. falciparum do not require Sec to reduce small molecule substrates including 5,5′dithio-bis(2-nitrobenzoic acid), lipoic acid, selenite, and selenocystine. The data shows that high Mr TRs can be divided into two groups based upon substrate utilization patterns: a TR1 group and a TR3-like group. We have constructed mutants of TR3-like enzymes from mouse, D. melanogaster, C. elegans, and P. falciparum and the kinetic data from these mutants show that these enzymes are less dependent upon the use of Sec for the reduction of substrates. We posit that the mechanistic differences between TR1 and the TR3-like enzymes in this study are due to the presence of a “guiding bar”, amino acids 407–422, found in TR1, but not TR3-like enzymes. The guiding bar, proposed by Becker and coworkers [Fritz-Wolf, K., Urig, S., and Becker, K. (2007) The structure of human thioredoxin reductase 1 provides insights into C-terminal rearrangements during catalysis, J Mol Biol 370, 116–127.], restricts the motion of the C-terminal tail containing the C-terminal Gly-Cys-Sec-Gly, redox-active tetrapeptide so that only this C-terminal redox center can be reduced by the N-terminal redox center, with the exclusion of most other substrates. This makes TR1 highly dependent upon the use of Sec because the selenium atom is responsible for both accepting electrons from the N-terminal redox center and donating them to the substrate in this model. Loss of both Se-electrophilicity and Se-nucleophilicity in the Sec → Cys mutant of TR1 greatly reduces catalytic activity. TR3-like enzymes in contrast are less dependent upon the use of Sec because the absence of the guiding bar in these enzymes allows for greater substrate access to the N-terminal redox center, and because they can make use of alternative mechanistic pathways that are not available to TR1.
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