Identifying enzyme’s regioselectivity from an indicator diagram
This paper was part of my journal club recently. I touched upon LPMOs, short for Lytic Polysaccharide Monooxygenases, in my previous post that are basically oxidative enzymes.
These interesting group of enzymes have three basic types: Type I, Type II, and Type III, classified based on the site of attack, namely LPMO1 (Type I) when oxidation occurs at C1 carbon, LPMO2 (Type II) when oxidation occurs at C4 carbon, and LPMO3 (Type III) if either C1 or C4 carbons are attacked. These subtypes are part of four CAZy families to which LPMOs are categorized into (AA9, AA10, AA11, and AA13).
Having said this, the identification of the types in LPMO is not a trivial task. This specificity to cleave a particular bond, or regiospecificity, is characterized by time-consuming chromatography experiments (HPAEC-PAD), as they are time course studies that involve incubating with the substrate for longer periods. If aldonic acids are discovered in the experiments, then it is C1 cleaving or Type I; and if 4-gemdiol-aldose is detected than it is C4 cleaving of Type II LPMOs.
Given this complex identification protocol, any shortcut to identify the regiospecificity is welcome and that’s what Danneels et al have attempted in their paper published in PLOS ONE. Specifically, using an indicator diagram based identification, they give a solution to identify regiospecificity.
To test they used Hypocrea jecorina‘s LPMO9A (having both C1/C4 cleavage) and did site-directed mutagenesis on key aromatic residues that are involved in substrate binding to create mutants that are either selective to C1 or C4 cleavage. Comparing the activity of the wildtype with the mutants by plotting the speed of release of aldonic acids with respect to 4-gemdiol-aldose the authors plot it as an indicator diagram. Basically, if one calculate the slope of the line, and it is closer to x-axis (release of aldonic acid) then the enzyme’s regiospecificity is for C1 oxidation or consisting of Type I LPMO activity. If closer to y-axis, then Type II LPMO activity.
It would be interesting to see this type of indicator diagram applied for enzyme activity identification for new LPMO enzymes, and also for enzyme engineering studies on LPMO.
Reference: B. Danneels, M. Tanghe, H. Joosten, T. Gundinger, O. Spadiut, I. Stals and T. Desmet, “A quantitative indicator diagram for lytic polysaccharide monooxygenases reveals the role of aromatic surface residues in HjLPMO9A regioselectivity“, 2017. .
Getting to know Structural Bioinformatics 