Abstract
The acetylcholinesterase (AChE) active site consists of a narrow gorge with two separate ligand binding sites: an acylation site (or A-site) at the bottom of the gorge where substrate hydrolysis occurs and a peripheral site (or P-site) at the gorge mouth. AChE is inactivated by organophosphates as they pass through the P-site and phosphorylate the catalytic serine in the A-site. One strategy to protect against organophosphate inactivation is to design cyclic ligands that will bind specifically to the P-site and block the passage of organophosphates but not acetylcholine. To accelerate the process of identifying cyclic compounds with high affinity for the AChE P-site, we introduced a cysteine residue near the rim of the P-site by site-specific mutagenesis to generate recombinant human H287C AChE. Compounds were synthesized with a highly reactive methanethiosulfonyl substituent and linked to this cysteine through a disulfide bond. The advantages of this tethering were demonstrated with H287C AChE modified with six compounds, consisting of cationic trialkylammonium, acridinium, and tacrine ligands with tethers of varying length. Modification by ligands with short tethers had little effect on catalytic properties, but longer tethering resulted in shifts in substrate hydrolysis profiles and reduced affinity for acridinium affinity resin. Molecular modeling calculations indicated that cationic ligands with tethers of intermediate length bound to the P-site, whereas those with long tethers reached the A-site. These binding locations were confirmed experimentally by measuring competitive inhibition constants KI2 for propidium and tacrine, inhibitors specific for the P- and A-sites, respectively. Values of KI2 for propidium increased 30- to 100-fold when ligands had either intermediate or long tethers. In contrast, the value of KI2 for tacrine increased substantially only when ligands had long tethers. These relative changes in propidium and tacrine affinities thus provided a sensitive molecular ruler for assigning the binding locations of the tethered cations.
Highlights
The acetylcholinesterase (AChE) active site consists of a narrow gorge with two separate ligand binding sites: an acylation site at the bottom of the gorge where substrate hydrolysis occurs and a peripheral site at the gorge mouth
A series of tethered quaternary ammonium derivatives of tyrosine was incorporated into the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor to map the agonist binding site [33]
Chemical modification of an endogenous cysteine residue was used to introduce a tethered quaternary ammonium group that constitutively activated the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor [34], and cysteine mutagenesis followed by modification with the MTS class of sulfhydryl reagents has been useful in probing the acetylcholine binding sites of this receptor [18] and the benzodiazepine binding site of the GABAA receptor [35]
Summary
Materials—Recombinant human wild type and H287C mutant AChEs were expressed as secreted dimeric forms in Drosophila S2 cells in culture [15, 19] and purified by two cycles of affinity chromatography on acridinium resin [20]. Reaction of MTS Reagents I–VI with Radiomethylated H287C AChE—Preparations of H287C were reductively radiomethylated with [3H]HCHO and sodium cyanoborohydride to allow better quantification of AChE protein following MTS labeling [26] This procedure converts the primary amino groups at the N terminus and seven lysine residues in each AChE subunit to di-[3H]methylamines but has no effect on enzyme activity. When III–V were initially placed outside the active site, local energy minima were reached with the quaternary amine equidistant from Asp-74 and Asp-292 This location was an artifact, apparently resulting from the absence of explicit waters in the minimizations and the inappropriate extension of electrostatic interactions through the vacuum.
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