Flavoprotein Domain Research Articles

High Reductase Activity of Recombinant NOS2 Flavoprotein Domain Lacking the Calmodulin Binding Regulatory Sequence

Nitric oxide synthases (NOSs) represent a special case of the cytochrome P450: cytochrome P450 reductase system in which the two redox partners occur as distinct domains on the same polypeptide chain and are linked by a calmodulin binding regulatory sequence. We expressed the carboxy-terminal, flavoprotein domain (residues 527–1144) of murine NOS2 in E. coli. The UV-visible spectrum of this domain resembles those of other flavoproteins, and the protein catalyses the reduction of ferricytochrome c by NADPH [V max= 3.1 ± .1 mol cytochrome reduced/minute/mmol flavoprotein domain, K m(cytochrome c) = 23 ± 2 μM, K m(NADPH) = 0.30 ± .06 μM]. The high reductase activity of this NOS2 flavoprotein domain, which lacks a calmodulin binding site, precludes a role for this site in mediating electron transfer within the flavoprotein domain of the intact enzyme. This is in contrast to the case of NOS1 and suggests that electron transfer is regulated differently in the two isoforms.

Functional interactions in cytochrome P450BM3. Fatty acid substrate binding alters electron-transfer properties of the flavoprotein domain.

P450BM3 is a bacterial fusion protein between a cytochrome P450 fatty acid hydroxylase (CYP102) and an FAD- and FMN-containing flavoprotein homologous to NADPH: cytochrome P450 reductase. It has been shown that incubation of P450BM3 with NADPH in the absence of a fatty acid substrate results in inhibition of hydroxylase activity [Narhi, L. O., & Fulco, A. J. (1986) J. Biol. Chem. 261, 7160-7169]. We show that laurate-dependent oxidation of NADPH and oxygen consumption are also inhibited under those conditions. The inhibited enzyme is unable to transfer electrons to the heme iron, but reduces artificial electron acceptors such as cytochrome c, 2,6-dichlorophenolindophenol, or ferricyanide. Incubation with these acceptors rapidly restores hydroxylase activity of P450BM3. The active enzyme is able to catalyze the reduction of cytochrome c and hydroxylation of laurate simultaneously. Cytochrome c has no effect on the K(m) and Vmax of laurate hydroxylation. Laurate and other substrates stimulate cytochrome c reduction by 50-70%. Carbon monoxide inhibits hydroxylase activity, but stimulates cytochrome c reduction 3-4 fold and has no effect on the K(m) for cytochrome c. This stimulation requires binding of a substrate at the heme catalytic site. Laurate binding induces conformational changes in the flavoprotein domain as shown by a 2-fold increase of the flavin fluorescence. Inactivation of P450BM3 by NADPH abolishes the stimulation of cytochrome c reduction by laurate and CO. Complete inhibition of hydroxylase activity correlates with complete lack of stimulation of cytochrome c reduction. The results suggest that a specific conformation of the two domains is maintained in the active P450BM3, ensuring high hydroxylase activity. Cytochrome c reductase and hydroxylase activities of P450BM3 involve different sites of interaction with the flavoprotein domain, different catalytic intermediates, and different rate-limiting steps.

Equilibrium and transient state spectrophotometric studies of the mechanism of reduction of the flavoprotein domain of P450BM-3.

The flavoprotein domain of P450BM-3 (BMR), which is functionally analogous to eukaryotic NADPH-P450 oxidoreductases, contains both FAD and FMN. When BMR is titrated with NADPH or sodium dithionite under anaerobic conditions, addition of 2 electron equivalents per mole of BMR results in the reduction of the high potential flavin (FMN) without the accumulation of semiquinone intermediates. Additional sodium dithionite first produces some neutral, blue flavin semiquinone radical and, finally, fully reduced FADH2. During reduction with NADPH, an absorbance increase characteristic of the formation of a flavin-pyridine nucleotide charge-transfer complex was observed only during the addition of the second mole of NADPH per mole of BMR. On the basis of these results, we conclude that the midpoint reduction potential for the FMN semiquinone/FMNH2 couple is more positive than that for FMN/FMN semiquinone. The kinetics of reduction of BMR with NADPH were studied by stopped-flow spectrophotometry. With a 1:1 ratio of NADPH to BMR, the absorbance changes can be fit to five consecutive first order reactions with rate constants of 350 s-1, 130 s-1, 27 s-1, 2.3 s-1, and 0.05 s-1. These reactions are most probably the following: (a) complex formation between BMR and NADPH; (b) reduction of FAD with formation of the NADP(+)-FADH- charge-transfer complex; (c) transfer of the first electron from FADH- to FMN to form an anionic, red FMN semiquinone leaving the FAD as the neutral, blue semiquinone. Precise identification of intermediates beyond this point is difficult. In the presence of a 10-fold molar excess of NADPH, the absorbance changes and rate constants are somewhat different due to the formation of several additional reduced species of BMR. The rate of the first step increases, confirming that this is the formation of the NADPH-BMR complex. Our results indicate that the kinetic and thermodynamic control of the flavins in BMR is significantly different from that in microsomal P450 reductase. The low potential of the anionic FMN semiquinone can be utilized to reduce the P450 heme. When the anionic semiquinone becomes protonated, its potential becomes more positive and it is readily reduced to FMNH2, which is not capable of reducing P450.

NADPH-P-450 reductase: Structural and functional comparisons of the eukaryotic and prokaryotic isoforms

The comparison of the properties of microsomal NADPH-P-450 reductase and the flavoprotein domain of P-450 BM-3 (BMR) has revealed a significant difference in the mechanism of reduction of the hemoprotein P-450 by these flavoproteins. Microsomal NADPH-P-450 reductase transfers electrons to the hemoprotein by shuttling between hydroquinone and semiquinone forms of the FMN delivering one electron per cycle. Since the microsomal NADPH-P450 reductase has evolved as a component of multienzyme system, this type of mechanism may permit regulation of the steps of the P-450 reaction via variation in the affinity of the reductase for different P-450s, interaction with cytochrome b 5, etc. In contrast, in the soluble, bacterial flavocytochrome P-450 BM-3, the reductase domain has evolved together with a single unique heme domain. This enzyme was found to utilize the fastest and simplest way to reduce the heme iron, with the FMN moiety of BMR shuttling between the semiquinone and oxidized states. This mechanism of reduction provides the highest turnover number of any P-450 and tight coupling of the monooxygenation reaction. While there are clear differences in the intermediates involved in the reduction of P-450s by these two enzymes, the domain structure and presumably the mode of interaction between the reductase and P-450s has been maintained over evolutionary time.

High-level expression in Escherichia coli of enzymatically active fusion proteins containing the domains of mammalian cytochromes P450 and NADPH-P450 reductase flavoprotein.

This report describes the properties of two mammalian cytochromes P450 that have been expressed at high levels in Escherichia coli as enzymatically active fusion proteins containing the flavoprotein domain of rat NADPH-cytochrome P450 reductase (EC 1.6.2.4). Fusion proteins were prepared by engineering the cDNAs for the steroid-metabolizing bovine adrenal P450 17A with the cDNA for rat liver NADPH-P450 reductase with the introduction of a Ser-Thr linker to give a protein we have named rF450[mBov17A/mRatOR]L1. Similarly, the cDNA for the omega-hydroxylase of rat liver (P450 4A1) was linked with the cDNA for rat liver NADPH-P450 reductase to give rF450[mRat4A1/mRatOR]L1. A procedure involving disruption of transformed E. coli by sonication, isolation of membranes by differential centrifugation, solubilization with detergent, and affinity chromatography provided significant amounts of purified fusion proteins of approximately 118 kDa. The purified fusion proteins had turnover numbers for the metabolism of steroids (rF450[mBov17A/mRatOR]L1) or fatty acids (rF450[mRat4A1/mRatOR]L1) ranging from 10/min to 30/min in the absence of added phospholipid. Addition of purified rat liver cytochrome b5 stimulated the 17,20-lyase reaction for the conversion of 17-hydroxypregnenolone to dehydroepiandrosterone, and addition of purified rat NADPH-cytochrome P450 reductase enhanced the formation of omega--1 metabolites from lauric and arachidonic acids. NADPH oxidation was tightly coupled to substrate hydroxylation with the purified fusion proteins.

Reconstitution of the fatty acid hydroxylation function of cytochrome P-450BM-3 utilizing its individual recombinant hemo- and flavoprotein domains.

Cytochrome P-450BM-3 is a catalytically self-sufficient fatty acid omega-hydroxylase with two domains. Functional and primary structure analyses of the hemo- and flavoprotein domains of cytochrome P-450BM-3 and the corresponding microsomal cytochrome P-450 system have shown that these proteins are highly homologous. Prior attempts to reconstitute the fatty acid hydroxylation function of cytochrome P-450BM-3, utilizing the two domains, obtained either by trypsinolysis or by recombinant methods, were unsuccessful. In this paper, we describe the reconstitution of the fatty acid hydroxylation activity of cytochrome P-450BM-3 utilizing the recombinantly produced flavoprotein domain (Oster, T., Boddupalli, S. S., and Peterson, J. A. (1991) J. Biol. Chem. 266, 22718-22725) and its hemoprotein counterpart. The rate of fatty acid-dependent oxygen consumption was shown to be linear when increasing concentrations of the hemoprotein domain are added to a fixed concentration of the flavoprotein domain and vice versa. The combination of the hemo- and flavoprotein domains in a ratio of 20:1 respectively, in the reaction mixture, results in the transfer of 80% of the reducing equivalents from NADPH for the hydroxylation of palmitate at 25 degrees C. The ratio of the regioisomeric products obtained for lauric, myristic, and palmitic acids was similar to that obtained with the holoenzyme form of cytochrome P-450BM-3. The reconstitution of the fatty acid omega-hydroxylase activity, using the soluble domains of cytochrome P-450BM-3, without added factors such as lipids, may be useful for structure/function comparisons to their eukaryotic counterparts.

Expression, purification, and properties of the flavoprotein domain of cytochrome P-450BM-3. Evidence for the importance of the amino-terminal region for FMN binding.

Comparison of the amino acid sequences of several microsomal cytochrome P-450 reductases to the flavoprotein domain (BMR) of cytochrome P-450BM-3 has revealed that this class of flavoproteins contains evolutionarily conserved regions that are important for their interaction with nucleotide substrates and cofactors. In order to understand the properties of BMR, the region encoding this protein, beginning at residue Lys-472 of cytochrome P-450BM-3, was subcloned and expressed in Escherichia coli. The recombinant protein (more than 50% of host-soluble proteins) was purified to homogeneity using conventional purification procedures. BMR (Mr 66,000) showed typical flavoenzyme absorbance spectra, contained FAD and FMN in a stoichiometry of 1:1, and catalyzed reduction of several artificial electron acceptors with rates comparable to those of the microsomal NADPH-cytochrome P-450 oxidoreductase. Limited trypsinolysis of BMR, under non-denaturing conditions, revealed that the protease removed the NH2-terminal 122 residues. This region was postulated to contain amino acids that are important for FMN binding (Porter, T. D. (1991) Trends Biochem. Sci. 16, 154-158). Consistent with this hypothesis, the major tryptic product of BMR (BMR-52, Mr 52,000) contained only FAD, in an equimolar ratio to the protein. Also, like the FMN-depleted microsomal NADPH-cytochrome P-450 oxidoreductase (Kurzban, G. P., Howarth, J., Palmer, G., and Strobel, H. W. (1990) J. Biol. Chem. 265, 12272-12279), BMR-52 was active for only catalyzing ferricyanide reduction. These data provide strong experimental evidence for a discrete multidomain structure of BMR, as proposed for the membrane-bound reductases, with an amino-terminal FMN binding region and carboxyl-terminal FAD- and NADPH binding regions. Thus, BMR strongly resembles the microsomal cytochrome P-450 reductase and offers an opportunity to better understand the structure-function relationships of this class of flavoproteins.

Structural studies on mitochondrial NADH dehydrogenase using chemical cross-linking.

The structure of bovine heart mitochondrial NADH dehydrogenase was investigated by cross-linking constituent subunits with disuccinimidyl tartrate, (ethylene glycol)yl bis(succinimidyl succinate) and dimethyl suberimidate. Cross-linked products were identified by Western blotting with monospecific antisera to nine subunits of the enzyme. Cross-links between subunits within the flavoprotein, iron-protein and hydrophobic domains of the enzyme were identified. Cross-linking between the 75 kDa iron-protein-domain subunit and the 51 kDa flavoprotein-domain subunit was modulated by the substrate NADH. Cross-linking of subunits of the iron-protein and flavoprotein domains to constituents of the hydrophobic domain was also found. This was further substantiated by photolabelling subunits of the latter region, which were in contact with the membrane lipid, with 3-(trifluoromethyl)-3-(m-[125I]iodophenyl)diazirine. One such subunit of Mr 19,000 could be cross-linked to components of the iron-protein domain.

Spontaneous dissociation of a cytochrome core and a biglobular flavoprotein after mild trypsinolysis of the bifunctional Saccharomyces cerevisiae flavocytochrome b2.

Saccharomyces cerevisiae flavocytochrome b2 is known as a bifunctional enzyme which behaves as the association of an FMN flavodehydrogenase with its specific acceptor, a b5-like cytochrome. Mild trypsinolysis gives rise to three complementary fragments (n, X, beta'), both prosthetic groups being still bound. After such proteolysis the separation of a biglobular flavoprotein domain (carrying FMN) from a cytochrome domain (with the heme) is obtained by molecular sieving under non-denaturing conditions. The marked lack of affinity between the tetrameric flavoprotein (X, beta')4 and the monomeric cytochrome core (n) leads to the hypothesis that the two domains are not tightly associated in the native molecule and might more relative to each other. Their respective mobility is possibly required for the catalytic mechanism. The comparison with previous trypsinolysis studies on the flavocytochrome b2 from Hansenula anomala suggests the presence of two common zones of hypersensitivity to proteases, along the protomeric polypeptide chain, and strongly supports the validity of the triglobular model for both flavocytochromes.