Laccase catalyses the oxidation of a variety of organic substrates coupled to the reduction of oxygen to water. It is widely believed to be the simplest representative of the ubiquitous blue multi-copper oxidase family. Laccase is implicated in a wide spectrum of biological activities and, in particular, plays a key role in morphogenesis, development and lignin metabolism in fungi and plants. The structure of laccase from the fungus Coprinus cinereus has been determined by X-ray crystallography at a resolution of 2.2 A. Laccase is a monomer composed of three cupredoxin-like beta-sandwich domains, similar to that found in ascorbate oxidase. In contrast to ascorbate oxidase, however, the mononuclear type-1 Cu site lacks the axial methionine ligand and so exhibits trigonal planar coordination, consistent with its elevated redox potential. Crucially, the structure is trapped in a Cu depleted form in which the putative type-2 Cu atom is completely absent, but in which the remaining type-1 and type-3 Cu sites display full occupancy. Type-2 Cu depletion has unexpected consequences for the coordination of the remaining type-3 Cu atoms.
1-Hydroxybenzotriazole, violuric acid, and N-hydroxyacetanilide are three N-OH compounds capable of mediating a range of laccase-catalyzed biotransformations, such as paper pulp delignification and degradation of polycyclic hydrocarbons. The mechanism of their enzymatic oxidation was studied with seven fungal laccases. The oxidation had a bell-shaped pH-activity profile with an optimal pH ranging from 4 to 7. The oxidation rate was found to be dependent on the redox potential difference between the N-OH substrate and laccase. A laccase with a higher redox potential or an N-OH compound with a lower redox potential tended to have a higher oxidation rate. Similar to the enzymatic oxidation of phenols, phenoxazines, phenothiazines, and other redox-active compounds, an "outer-sphere" type of single-electron transfer from the substrate to laccase and proton release are speculated to be involved in the rate-limiting step for N-OH oxidation.Laccases (EC 1.10.3.2) are multi-Cu oxidases that can catalyze the oxidation of a range of reducing substances with the concomitant reduction of O 2 (for recent reviews, see reference 24 and references therein). Because of their capability of catalyzing the oxidation of aromatic compounds, laccases are receiving increasing attention as potential industrial enzymes in various applications, such as pulp delignification, wood fiber modification, dye or stain bleaching, chemical or medicinal synthesis, and contaminated water or soil remediation (15, 37).Laccases contain one type 1 (T1) Cu center, one type 2 (T2) Cu center, and one type 3 (T3) Cu center. The T2 and T3 sites form a trinuclear Cu cluster onto which O 2 is reduced. The T1 Cu oxidizes the reducing substrate and transfers electrons to the T2 and T3 Cu. Laccase is able to oxidize certain phenols with E 0 values higher than its own (0.5 to 0.8 V versus the normal hydrogen electrode [NHE]) (36). However, many inorganic and organic compounds with comparable E 0 values (such as 1,2,3,5-tetramethoxybenzene [18]) are not laccase substrates due to unfavorable kinetics. Under certain conditions, however, these compounds can be indirectly oxidized by laccase through the mediation of small, redox-active laccase substrates. 2,2Ј-Azinobis(3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid) (ABTS) was the first compound found capable of efficiently mediating the laccase oxidation of high-E 0 , nonsubstrate lignin model compounds (such as veratryl alcohol and nonphenolic lignin model dimers) (8). Based on product structure analysis, it has been proposed that laccase-oxidized ABTS can abstract an H atom from the lignin model compounds, leading to indirect laccase catalysis upon the oxidation of the compounds (25). To date, other types of mediators, particularly phenoxazines and N-OH compounds, also have been recognized for their mediation function in laccase catalysis (1, 6,17,29).Mediated laccase catalysis has been applied to a wide range of applications, such as pulp delignification (9, 10, 12, 22, 32), textile dye bleaching (31), polycyclic aromatic h...
The Coprinus cinereus (CiP) heme peroxidase was subjected to multiple rounds of directed evolution in an effort to produce a mutant suitable for use as a dye-transfer inhibitor in laundry detergent. The wild-type peroxidase is rapidly inactivated under laundry conditions due to the high pH (10.5), high temperature (50 degrees C), and high peroxide concentration (5-10 mM). Peroxidase mutants were initially generated using two parallel approaches: site-directed mutagenesis based on structure-function considerations, and error-prone PCR to create random mutations. Mutants were expressed in Saccharomyces cerevisiae and screened for improved stability by measuring residual activity after incubation under conditions mimicking those in a washing machine. Manually combining mutations from the site-directed and random approaches led to a mutant with 110 times the thermal stability and 2.8 times the oxidative stability of wild-type CiP. In the final two rounds, mutants were randomly recombined by using the efficient yeast homologous recombination system to shuffle point mutations among a large number of parents. This in vivo shuffling led to the most dramatic improvements in oxidative stability, yielding a mutant with 174 times the thermal stability and 100 times the oxidative stability of wild-type CiP.
Two laccases have been purified to apparent electrophoretic homogeneity from the extracellular medium of a 2,5-xylidine-induced culture of the white rot basidiomycete Trametes villosa (Polyporus pinsitus or Coriolus pinsitus). These proteins are dimeric, consisting of two subunits of 63 kDa as determined by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, and have typical blue laccase spectral properties. Under nondenaturing conditions, the two purified laccases have different pIs; purified laccase forms 1 and 3 have pIs of 3.5 and 6 to 6.5, respectively. A third purified laccase form 2 has the same N terminus as that of laccase form 3, but its pI is in the range of 5 to 6. The laccases have optimal activity at pH 5 to 5.5 and pH <2.7 with syringaldazine and ABTS [2,2-azinobis-(3-ethylbenzthiazoline-6-sulfonic acid)] as substrates, respectively. The genes lcc1 and lcc2 coding for the two purified laccases (forms 1 and 3) have been cloned, and their nucleotide sequences have been determined. The genes for lcc1 and lcc2 have 8 and 10 introns, respectively. The predicted proteins are 79% identical at the amino acid level. From Northern (RNA) blots containing total RNA from both induced and uninduced cultures, expression of lcc1 is highly induced, while the expression of lcc2 appears to be constitutive. Lcc1 has been expressed in Aspergillus oryzae, and the purified recombinant protein has the same pI, spectral properties, stability, and pH profiles as the purified native protein.
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