Impact of the lysine-188 and aspartic acid-189 inversion on activity of trypsin

The impact of the charge rearrangement on the specificity of trypsin was tested by an inversion of sequence K188D/D189K maintaining the integrity of the charges of the substrate binding pocket when switching their polarity. In native trypsin, aspartate 189 situated at the bottom of the primary substrate binding pocket interacts with arginine and lysine side chains of the substrate. The kinetic parameters of the wild-type trypsin and K188D/D189K mutant were determined with synthetic tetrapeptide substrates. Compared with trypsin, the mutant K188D/D189K exhibits a 1.5- to 6-fold increase in the K m for the substrates containing arginine and lysine, respectively. This mutant shows a ∼30-fold decrease of its k cat and its second-order rate constant k cat/ K m decreases ∼40- and 150-fold for substrates containing arginine and lysine, respectively. Hence, trypsin K188D/D189K displays a large increase in preference for arginine over lysine.