Intersubunit Communication in Hybrid Hexamers of K89L/A163G/S380A and C320S Mutants of Glutamate Dehydrogenase from Clostridium symbiosum

The triple mutant K89L/A163G/S380A (inactive with glutamate but active with l-Nle and l-Met) and C320S (fully active with glutamate, entirely inactive with l-Nle and l-Met, and also lacking reactive cysteine) mutant of glutamate dehydrogenase (EC 1.4.1.2) of Clostridium symbiosum could be completely denatured by urea with the loss of structure and activity. The mutants denatured by urea could be reassociated to give stable hexamers with recovery of activity of ∼67% by dilution in 0.1 M potassium phosphate buffer (pH 7.0) containing 2 mM NAD+. The native, urea-denatured, and renatured states of mutant enzymes were characterized by size exclusion chromatography on FPLC and native PAGE. Intersubunit hybrid hexamers containing five subunits of triple mutant and one subunit of C320S mutant were constructed by in vitro subunit hybridization followed by affinity chromatography. Kinetic analysis showed that a 5:1 hybrid hexamer, with only one C320S subunit able to bind NAD+ after DTNB modification, shows classical Michaelis−Menten kinetics with regard to NAD+. This contrasts with the apparent negative co-operativity shown by pure C320S hexamers and suggests that the interaction in NAD+ binding among subunits is eliminated in the hybrid. After removal of thionitrobenzoate, however, all of the subunits in the hybrid are able to bind NAD+. In this state the hybrid enzyme showed slight deviation from classical behavior with regard to NAD+, indicating reintroduction of some level of allosteric interaction. The hybrid hexamer also showed much reduced co-operativity with glutamate at pH 8.8, with a Hill coefficient of 3 for DTNB-treated hybrid (as compared to 5.2 for the pure C320S mutant) and 2.2 for the untreated hybrid. The fact that co-operativity in glutamate binding is not entirely eliminated correlates with evidence that the triple mutant subunits, though inactive toward glutamate, can nevertheless still bind this amino acid.