The transfer of electrons and protons between membranebound respiratory complexes is facilitated by lipid-soluble redox-active quinone molecules (Q). This work presents a structural analysis of the quinone-binding site (Q-site) identified in succinate:ubiquinone oxidoreductase (SQR) from Escherichia coli. SQR, often referred to as Complex II or succinate dehydrogenase, is a functional member of the Krebs cycle and the aerobic respiratory chain and couples the oxidation of succinate to fumarate with the reduction of quinone to quinol (QH 2 ). The interaction between ubiquinone and the Q-site of the protein appears to be mediated solely by hydrogen bonding between the O1 carbonyl group of the quinone and the side chain of a conserved tyrosine residue. In this work, SQR was co-crystallized with the ubiquinone binding-site inhibitor Atpenin A5 (AA5) to confirm the binding position of the inhibitor and reveal additional structural details of the Q-site. The electron density for AA5 was located within the same hydrophobic pocket as ubiquinone at, however, a different position within the pocket. AA5 was bound deeper into the site prompting further assessment using proteinligand docking experiments in silico. The initial interpretation of the Q-site was re-evaluated in the light of the new SQR-AA5 structure and protein-ligand docking data. Two binding positions, the Q 1 -site and Q 2 -site, are proposed for the E. coli SQR quinone-binding site to explain these data. At the Q 2 -site, the side chains of a serine and histidine residue are suitably positioned to provide hydrogen bonding partners to the O4 carbonyl and methoxy groups of ubiquinone, respectively. This allows us to propose a mechanism for the reduction of ubiquinone during the catalytic turnover of the enzyme.The Complex II family is comprised of two homologous integral membrane proteins (1-4). Succinate:quinone oxidoreductase (SQR), 4 or succinate dehydrogenase (SDH), is a functional member of the Krebs cycle and the aerobic respiratory chain coupling the oxidation of succinate to fumarate with the reduction of quinone (Q) to quinol (QH 2 ). Quinol:fumarate oxidoreductase (QFR), or fumarate reductase, catalyzes the reverse reaction to SQR during anaerobic respiration. Both enzymes have a similar subunit and cofactor composition (1-4). The hydrophilic subunits, composed of a flavoprotein (SdhA) and an ironsulfur protein (SdhB), have a high degree of sequence homology across species. The SdhAB catalytic subunits are anchored to the membrane by the hydrophobic SdhCD subunits, which in the case of mammalian and Escherichia coli Complex II form a cytochrome b that contains one heme b. The two-electron oxidation of succinate at the substrate binding site in the SdhA subunit is coupled to the two-electron reduction of quinone in the membrane domain of Complex II. Electrons are sequentially transferred to ubiquinone (in the case of mammalian and E. coli Quinones can undergo 2e Ϫ /2H ϩ oxidation-reduction reactions, an essential feature of respiration, allowing the t...
Saccharomyces cerevisiae has been used as a model system to characterize the effect of cytochrome b mutations found in fungal and oomycete plant pathogens resistant to Q o inhibitors (QoIs), including the strobilurins, now widely employed in agriculture to control such diseases. Specific residues in the Q o site of yeast cytochrome b were modified to obtain four new forms mimicking the Q o binding site of Erysiphe graminis, Venturia inaequalis, Sphaerotheca fuliginea and Phytophthora megasperma. These modified versions of cytochrome b were then used to study the impact of the introduction of the G143A mutation on bc 1 complex activity. In addition, the effects of two other mutations F129L and L275F, which also confer levels of QoI insensitivity, were also studied. The G143A mutation caused a high level of resistance to QoI compounds such as myxothiazol, axoxystrobin and pyraclostrobin, but not to stigmatellin. The pattern of resistance conferred by F129L and L275F was different. Interestingly G143A had a slightly deleterious effect on the bc 1 function in V. inaequalis, S. fuliginea and P. megasperma Q o site mimics but not in that for E. graminis. Thus small variations in the Q o site seem to affect the impact of the G143A mutation on bc 1 activity. Based on this observation in the yeast model, it might be anticipated that the G143A mutation might affect the fitness of pathogens differentially. If so, this could contribute to observed differences in the rates of evolution of QoI resistance in fungal and oomycete pathogens.
A simple chloroalkane or chlorocycloalkane has a very small hydrogen bond basicity, B = 0.1 units. Since B is often an additive function, it is possible that polychloro-alkanes or -cycloalkanes could have quite large hydrogen bond basicities. Literature data on the 1,2,3,4,5,6-hexachlorocyclohexanes (HCHs) have been analyzed by Abraham's linear free energy relationships to obtain solvation descriptors. These are not extraordinary except for the hydrogen bond basicity, B, which is indeed very large. Values of B for the HCHs are larger than many functionally substituted aliphatic compounds and as large as that of aliphatic amines. We find that B is 0.62-0.72 for the HCHs compared to 0.45 for propanone and 0.70 for ethylamine, the first time that such large hydrogen bond basicities have been identified in compounds with no functional groups. Hydrogen bond basicities are analyzed in order to examine what types of polychlorocompounds give rise to these elevated B values.
Many 3D QSAR methods require the alignment of the molecules in a dataset, which can require a fair amount of manual effort in deciding upon a rational basis for the superposition. This paper describes the use of FBSS, a program for field-based similarity searching in chemical databases, for generating such alignments automatically. CoMFA and CoMSIA experiments with several literature datasets show that the QSAR models resulting from the FBSS alignments are broadly comparable in predictive performance with the models resulting from manual alignments.
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