The structure of yeast triosephosphate isomerase (TIM) has been solved at 3.0-A resolution and refined at 1.9-A resolution to an R factor of 21.0%. The final model consists of all non-hydrogen atoms in the polypeptide chain and 119 water molecules, a number of which are found in the interior of the protein. The structure of the active site clearly indicates that the carboxylate of the catalytic base, Glu 165, is involved in a hydrogen-bonding interaction with the hydroxyl of Ser 96. In addition, the interactions of the other active site residues, Lys 12 and His 95, are also discussed. For the first time in any TIM structure, the "flexible loop" has well-defined density; the conformation of the loop in this structure is stabilized by a crystal contact. Analysis of the subunit interface of this dimeric enzyme hints at the source of the specificity of one subunit for another and allows us to estimate an association constant of 10(14)-10(16) M-1 for the two monomers. The analysis also suggests that the interface may be a particularly good target for drug design. The conserved positions (20%) among sequences from 13 sources ranging on the evolutionary scale from Escherichia coli to humans reveal the intense pressure to maintain the active site structure.

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Oxidation-reduction midpoint potentials were determined, as a function of pH, for the disulfide/dithiol couples of spinach and pea thioredoxins f, for spinach and Chlamydomonas reinhardtii thioredoxins m, for spinach ferredoxin:thioredoxin reductase (FTR), and for two enzymes regulated by thioredoxin f, spinach phosphoribulokinase (PRK) and the fructose-1,6-bisphosphatases (FBPase) from pea and spinach. Midpoint oxidation-reduction potential (E m ) values at pH 7.0 of -290 mV for both spinach and pea thioredoxin f, -300 mV for both C. reinhardtii and spinach thioredoxin m, -320 mV for spinach FTR, -290 mV for spinach PRK, -315 mV for pea FBPase, and -330 mV for spinach FBPase were obtained. With the exception of spinach FBPase, titrations showed a single two-electron component at all pH values tested. Spinach FBPase exhibited a more complicated behavior, with a single two-electron component being observed at pH values g 7.0, but with two components being present at pH values <7.0. The slopes of plots of E m versus pH were close to the -60 mV/pH unit value expected for a process that involves the uptake of two protons per two electrons (i.e., the reduction of a disulfide to two fully protonated thiols) for thioredoxins f and m, for FTR, and for pea FBPase. The slope of the E m versus pH profile for PRK shows three regions, consistent with the presence of pK a values for the two regulatory cysteines in the region between pH 7.5 and 9.0.The ferredoxin/thioredoxin system of oxygenic photosynthetic organisms plays an important role in the regulation of the carbon metabolism of these organisms (1-3). The initial step in the thioredoxin regulatory pathway, which has been extensively characterized in spinach and pea chloroplasts, involves the reduction of ferredoxin:thioredoxin reductase (hereafter abbreviated FTR 1 ) by the reduced ferredoxin generated during light-driven noncyclic electron flow (1-3). Spinach leaf FTR, the best characterized of these enzymes, is a 25.6 kDa heterodimeric protein located in the chloroplast stroma (1-3). FTR contains a unique cluster that serves to stabilize the one-electron-reduced intermediate formed after the first electron donation by ferredoxin, during the two-electron reduction of the activesite disulfide of the oxidized enzyme to the two cysteine thiols present in reduced FTR (4, 5). FTR reduces thioredoxin in a reaction in which the two cysteines at the active site of the reduced enzyme become oxidized to a cystine disulfide, while the active-site disulfide of the oxidized thioredoxin becomes reduced to two cysteine thiols (1-5). FTR reduces both of the thioredoxins found in chloroplasts, thioredoxin f and thioredoxin m (monomeric proteins with molecular masses of ∼12 kDa that contain a conserved -WCGPCactive site), with equal efficiency. However, the two chloroplast thioredoxins display differential but overlapping reactivities among the array of identified target proteins (1-3). Although regulatory reduction by thioredoxin m appears to be restricted to glucose-6-phosph...