Interaction of fluorescence probes with acetylcholinesterase. The site and specificity of propidium binding.

A bis-quaternary fluorescence probe, propidium diiodide, has been found to exhibit a tenfold enhancement of fluorescence when bound to acetylcholinesterase from Torpedo california. The complex is characterized by a high affinity, KD = 3.0 times 10-7 M, and 1:1 stoichiometry with the 82,000 molecular weight subunit of acetylcholinesterase. A wide variety of other quaternary ammonium ligands such as decamethonium, gallamine, d-tubocurarine, tetraethylammonium, and tetramethylammonium will completely dissociate propidium from the enzyme as will monovalent and divalent inorganic cations. The competitive dissociation does not show cooperative behavior or a distinct, requirement for occupation of multiple sites of different affinity to produce displacement. While a directly competitive relationship can be illustrated macroscopically, the various quaternary ligands show a different susceptibility toward inorganic cation displacement. The affinity of propidium relative to gallamine increases with ionic strength. This finding indicates that there is not complete equivalence in the negative subsites to which quaternary groups bind. Although edrophoniumwill also displace propidium from the enzyme, the dissociation constant obtained from this competitive relationship is 3.5 orders of magnitude greater than the constants obtained for inhibition of catalysis. By competitive displacement titrations it is shown that the primary binding site of edrophonium is distinct from that of propidium and a ternary complex with the two ligands can form on each subunit. In contrast to edrophonium, the binding of propidium is unaffected by methanesulfonylation of the active center serine and is uncompetitive with the carbamylating substrate, N-methyl-7-dimethylcarbamoxyquinolinium. Thus, it appears that propidium associates with a peripheral anionic center on the enzyme. Although propidium and edrophonium associate at separate sites on acetylcholinesterase, bis-quaternary ligands where the quaternary nitrogens are separated by 14 A displace both ligands from the enzyme with equal effectiveness.