The ars operon of plasmid R773 encodes an As(III)/ Sb(III) extrusion pump. The catalytic subunit, the ArsA ATPase, has two homologous halves, A1 and A2, each with a consensus nucleotide-binding sequence. ATP hydrolysis is slow in the absence of metalloid and is accelerated by metalloid binding. ArsA M446W has a single tryptophan adjacent to the A2 nucleotide-binding site. The ars operon of R-factor R773 encodes an arsenite extrusion system that confers resistance in Escherichia coli to the metalloids arsenite (As(III)) and antimonite (Sb(III)) (1). This efflux pump has a catalytic subunit, the ArsA ATPase, and a membrane subunit, the ArsB arsenite carrier (2, 3). ArsA has N-terminal (A1) and C-terminal (A2) halves that are homologous to each other, most likely as the result of ancestral gene duplication and fusion (4). The enzyme has two nucleotidebinding domains, NBD11 and NBD2, both of which are composed of residues from both the A1 and A2 halves (5). Both NBDs are required for metalloid resistance (6, 7).Other pumps with multiple NBDs that exhibit multisite catalysis such as F-type ATPases and ATP-binding cassette ATPases have been proposed to have mechanisms that involve catalytic alternation between the NBDs (where only one is active at a time) and a high degree of cooperativity between the sites (8, 9). Kaur (10) has suggested that ArsA exhibits both unisite and multisite catalysis in which only NBD1 participates in unisite catalysis and that a functional A1 NBD is required for NBD2 to participate in multisite catalysis. We have considered a similar alternating site model for the function of ArsA, where the two NBDs alternate between open and closed conformations in a concerted and interactive manner, coupling the energy of ATP hydrolysis to the transfer of As(III) or Sb(III) at the metal site of ArsA to the ArsB carrier (11, 12). In the absence of metalloid, ArsA catalyzes hydrolysis of ATP at a low basal rate (k ϭ 0.001 s Ϫ1 ) (13). Under presteady state conditions the addition of Sb(III) produces two bursts of phosphate liberation, one of which is ϳ250-fold faster than the other (k ϭ 49 and 0.2 s Ϫ1 ) (12). From these results, it appears that both NBDs hydrolyze ATP in the activated state. However, the two NBDs are not equivalent in either structure (5, 11) or catalytic rates (12), which raises the question of whether they are functionally equivalent or whether they play different roles in metalloid resistance.To examine the role of the individual NBDs, we previously constructed two single tryptophan ArsAs (F141W and W159) that report nucleotide occupancy and hydrolysis in NBD1 (14, 15). In each half there is a 12-residue sequence (DTAPTGH) that is found in all ArsA homologues from bacteria to humans (14). In the ArsA structure these are seen as extended regions that connect the single regulatory metalloid-binding domain with the two NBDs and probably function in signal transduction between the two substrate sites and the regulatory site (5 ATP (14,15). The response of spectroscopic signals to nucleoti...