The temperature dependence of the primary and secondary intrinsic isotope effects for the C-H bond cleavage catalyzed by peptidylglycine alpha-hydroxylating monooxygenase has been determined. Analysis of the magnitude and Arrhenius behavior of the intrinsic isotope effects provides strong evidence for the use of tunneling as a primary catalytic strategy for this enzyme. Modeling of the isotope effect data allows for a comparison to the hydrogen transfer catalyzed by soybean lipoxygenase in terms of environmental reorganization energy and frequency of the protein vibration that controls the hydrogen transfer.

The bifunctional peptidylglycine alpha-amidating enzyme catalyzes the C-terminal amidation of glycine-extended peptides. The first enzyme activity, peptidylglycine alpha-hydroxylating monooxygenase, catalyzes the oxygen-, ascorbate-, and copper-dependent formation of alpha-hydroxyglycine derivatives. These are substrates for the second enzyme activity, peptidylamidoglycolate lyase, which catalyzes their breakdown to the corresponding C-terminal amidated peptide and glyoxylate as final products. Kinetic and isotope effect studies were carried out with N-benzoylglycine as a substrate at pH 6.0 using monofunctional and bifunctional monooxygenase activities. Kinetic data indicate an equilibrium ordered mechanism, with hippuric acid binding first followed by oxygen. A potentially important difference between the two monooxygenase activities is that product release occurs more slowly from the bifunctional enzyme, indicating an influence of the lyase domain on release of alpha-hydroxyglycine product to solution. Intrinsic isotope effects for the C-H bond cleavage were measured for the monofunctional form of the enzyme using a double-label tracer method, yielding 10.6 +/- 0.8 and 1.20 +/- 0.03 for the primary and alpha-secondary deuterium intrinsic isotope effects, respectively. These values are identical to previous measurements for the analogous enzyme system, dopamine beta-monooxygenase [Miller, S. M., and Klinman, J. P. (1985) Biochemistry 24, 2114-2127]. The identity of intrinsic isotope effects for peptidylglycine alpha-hydroxylating monooxygenase and dopamine beta-monooxygenase with substrates of comparable reactivity (N-benzoylglycine and dopamine, respectively) extends similarities between the two enzymes significantly beyond sequence homology and cofactor requirements.

Quercetin 2,3-dioxygenase from Bacillus subtilis (QueD) converts the flavonol quercetin and molecular oxygen to 2-protocatechuoylphloroglucinolcarboxylic acid and carbon monoxide. QueD, the only known quercetin 2,3-dioxygenase from a prokaryotic organism, has been described as an Fe2+-dependent bicupin dioxygenase. Metal-substituted QueDs were generated by expressing the enzyme in Escherichia coli grown on minimal media in the presence of a number of divalent metals. The addition of Mn2+, Co2+, and Cu2+ generated active enzymes, but the addition of Zn2+, Fe2+, and Cd2+ did not increase quercetinase activity to any significant level over a control in which no divalent ions were added to the media. The Mn2+- and Co2+-containing QueDs were purified, characterized by metal analysis and EPR spectroscopy, and studied by steady-state kinetics. Mn2+ was found to be incorporated nearly stoichiometrically to the two cupin motifs. The hyperfine coupling constant of the g = 2 signal in the EPR spectra of the Mn2+-containing enzyme showed that the two Mn2+ ions are ligated in an octahedral coordination. The turnover number of this enzyme was found to be in the order of 25 s(-1), nearly 40-fold higher than that of the Fe2+-containing enzyme and similar in magnitude to that of the Cu2+-containing quercertin 2,3-dioxygenase from Aspergillus japonicus. In addition, kinetic and spectroscopic data suggest that the catalytic mechanism of QueD is different from that of the Aspergillus quercetinases but similar to that proposed for the extradiol catechol dioxygenases. This study provides evidence that Mn2+ might be the preferred cofactor for this enzyme and identifies QueD as a new member of the manganese dioxygenase family.

Tyrosine hydroxylase converts tyrosine to dihydroxyphenylalanine utilizing a tetrahydropterin cofactor and molecular oxygen. Previous deuterium isotope effect studies have raised the possibility that the activation of oxygen might be the rate-limiting step for this reaction. To test the validity of this proposal, we have measured the 18O kinetic isotope effects for the tyrosine hydroxylase reaction as a function of amino acid substrate, tetrahydropterin derivative, and pH. The measured 18O isotope effects are nearly constant in every condition tested with an average value of 1.0175 ± 0.0019. These results are consistent with a change in the bond order to oxygen in the rate determining step. Furthermore, the isotope effects measured with the coupled substrate 4-methoxyphenylalanine and the completely uncoupled substrate 4-aminophenylalanine are identical, implying the same rate determining step independent of whether oxygen activation is coupled to substrate hydroxylation. The results of these studies provide strong support for a rate limiting reductive activation of molecular oxygen, most likely via a one-electron transfer from the tetrahydropterin to form superoxide anion as the first reactive intermediate.

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