Introduction. Dehydroquinate synthase (DHQS) is a -nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD ϩ )-dependent metalloenzyme that converts 3-deoxy-D-arabino-heptulosonate-7-phosphate to dehydroquinate in the shikimate pathway of bacteria, microbial eukaryotes, and plants. 1 This enzyme is expected to be one of the targets for novel antifungal and antibacterial drug designs, 2,3 because the shikimate pathway is absent in mammals, and DHQS is required for pathogenic virulence.4 DHQS is known to have a multistep mechanism, where a single active site catalyzes 5 sequential reactions involving alcohol oxidation, phosphate elimination, carbonyl reduction, ring opening, and intramolecular aldol condensation. 5,6 The crystal structure of DHQS from Aspergillus nidulans (AnDHQS) in complex with substrates and metal ions 7,8 elucidated important residues in the active site and ligand-induced intersubunit orientational changes that provide a potential reaction mechanism. The AnDHQS structures also revealed their dimeric state in crystal form, although its biological significance was not fully discussed. This time, we have solved the crystal structure of DHQS from Thermus thermophilus HB8 (TtDHQS) at 1.8 Å resolution, which is the first crystal structure of this enzyme from thermophilic organisms. We show that TtDHQS is present as a homodimer in crystal form, as well as in solution. In this article, we present the structural comparison between AnDHQS and TtDHQS, providing insight into the biological significance of the dimeric state of this enzyme.
Materials and Methods. Sample preparation:The expression plasmid pET-11a, which carries a gene encoding TtDHQS (residues 1-348) from the T. thermophilus HB8 genome, 9 was prepared by the RIKEN Structurome Group. Escherichia coli BL21 (DE3) cells were transformed with the expression plasmid and grown at 37°C in LuriaBertani (LB) medium containing 50 g/mL ampicillin for 20 h. The cells were harvested by centrifugation at 6500 rpm for 5 min, suspended in 20 mM Tris-HCl, pH 8.0 (buffer A), containing 0.5 M NaCl and 5 mM 2-mercaptoethanol, and disrupted by sonication. The supernatant was heated at 70°C for 10 min. After the heat treatment, cell debris and denatured proteins were removed by centrifugation (14,000 rpm, 30 min), and the supernatant was used as the crude extract for purification. The crude extract was desalted using a HiPrep 26/10 desalting column (Amersham-Biosciences) and applied onto a SuperQ TOYOPEAL 650 M column (Tosoh) equilibrated with buffer A. Proteins were eluted with a linear gradient of 0 -0.4 M NaCl. After the buffer replacement with 20 mM 2-Morpholinoethanesulfonic acid (MES)-NaOH pH 6.0 (buffer B), the fraction containing TtDHQS was subjected to a RESOURCE S column (Amersham-Biosciences) equilibrated with buffer B, and eluted with a linear gradient of 0 -0.4 M NaCl in buffer B. After the buffer replacement with 10 mM phosphate-NaOH, pH 7.0, the fraction containing TtDHQS was applied onto a Bio-Scale CHT-20-I column (BIO-RAD) equilibrated with the same buffer. Prot...