The evolutionary benefit accounting for widespread conservation of oligomeric structures in proteins lacking evidence of intersubunit cooperativity remains unclear. Here, crystal and cryo‐EM structures, and enzymological data, demonstrate that a conserved tetramer interface maintains the active‐site structure in one such class of proteins, the short‐chain dehydrogenase/reductase (SDR) superfamily. Phylogenetic comparisons support a significantly longer polypeptide being required to maintain an equivalent active‐site structure in the context of a single subunit. Oligomerization therefore enhances evolutionary fitness by reducing the metabolic cost of enzyme biosynthesis. The large surface area of the structure‐stabilizing oligomeric interface yields a synergistic gain in fitness by increasing tolerance to activity‐enhancing yet destabilizing mutations. We demonstrate that two paralogous SDR superfamily enzymes with different specificities can form mixed heterotetramers that combine their individual enzymological properties. This suggests that oligomerization can also diversify the functions generated by a given metabolic investment, enhancing the fitness advantage provided by this architectural strategy.
Brucella melitensis 7α-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase (Bm7α-HSDH) catalyzes the oxidation of chenodeoxycholic acid to 7-oxolithocholic acid. In this work, we investigated the effects of terminal modification (His-tags location and terminal truncation) on its catalytic efficiency and thermostability. Compared with C-terminal His-tagged Bm7α-HSDH (C-Bm7α-HSDH), N-Bm7α-HSDH showed a 3.6-fold higher k cat and a 1.3-fold lower K m , resulting in a 7.0-fold higher k cat /K m value toward chenodeoxycholic acid. Circular dichroism spectroscopy indicated that the melting temperature of N-Bm7α-HSDH (46.13 °C) was 3.0 °C lower than that of C-Bm7α-HSDH (49.13 °C). N-Bm7α-HSDH produced 7-oxolithocholic acid in the highest yield of 96.7% in 4 h, whereas the C-Bm7α-HSDH gave 96.4% in 10 h. Moreover, amino acids truncation and His-tag cleave experiments confirmed the C-terminal residues played key roles in catalytic functions. Molecular dynamics simulations further indicated C-terminal His-tagged modification could deform the substrate-binding region to disrupt the enzyme-substrate interactions and catalytic motion. However, the N-terminal His-tag hardly affected the catalytic efficiency due to its location far from the active site of the enzyme. This study provides structural insights into the terminus modifications of hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase on steroid substrate recognition and stabilization, thus affecting its catalytic functions.
Background: ( S )-1-phenyl-1,2-ethanediol is an important chiral intermediate in the synthesis of liquid crystals and chiral biphosphines.(S)-carbonyl reductase II from Candida parapsilosis catalyzes the conversion of 2-hydroxyacetophenone to ( S )-1-phenyl-1,2-ethanediol with NADPH as a cofactor. Glucose dehydrogenase with a Ala258Phe mutation is able to catalyze the oxidation of xylose with concomitant reduction of NADP + to NADPH, while endo-β-1,4-xylanase 2 catalyzes the conversion of xylan to xylose. In the present work, the Ala258Phe glucose dehydrogenase mutant and endo-β-1,4-xylanase 2 were introduced into the ( S )-carbonyl reductase II-mediated chiral pathway to strengthen cofactor regeneration by using xylan as a naturally abundant co-substrate.
Results: We constructed several coupled multi-enzyme systems by introducing ( S )-carbonyl reductase II, the A258F glucose dehydrogenase mutant and endo-β-1,4-xylanase 2 into Escherichia coli . Different strains were produced by altering the location of the encoding genes on the plasmid. Only recombinant E. coli /pET-G-S-2 expressed all three enzymes, and this strain produced ( S )-1-phenyl-1,2-ethanediol from 2-hydroxyacetophenone as a substrate and xylan as a co-substrate. The optical purity was 100% and the yield was 98.3% (6 g/L 2-HAP) under optimal conditions of 35°C, pH 6.5 and a 2:1 substrate-co-substrate ratio. The introduction of A258F glucose dehydrogenase and endo-β-1,4-xylanase 2 into the ( S )-carbonyl reductase II-mediated chiral pathway caused a 54.6% increase in yield, and simultaneously reduced the reaction time from 48 h to 28 h.
Conclusions: This study demonstrates efficient chiral synthesis using a pentose as a co-substrate to enhance cofactor regeneration. This provides a new approach for enantiomeric catalysis through the inclusion of naturally abundant materials.
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