Alteration of reaction and substrate specificity of a bacterial type III polyketide synthase by site-directed mutagenesis.

RppA, which belongs to the type III polyketide synthase family, catalyses the synthesis of 1,3,6,8-tetrahydroxynaphthalene (THN), which is the key intermediate of melanin biosynthesis in the bacterium Streptomyces griseus. The reaction of THN synthesis catalysed by RppA is unique in the type III polyketide synthase family, in that it selects malonyl-CoA as a starter substrate. The Cys-His-Asn catalytic triad is also present in RppA, as in plant chalcone synthases, as revealed by analyses of active-site mutants having amino acid replacements at Cys(138), His(270) and Asn(303) of RppA. Site-directed mutagenesis of the amino acid residues that are likely to form the active-site cavity revealed that the aromatic ring of Tyr(224) is essential for RppA to select malonyl-CoA as a starter substrate, since substitution of Tyr(224) by amino acids other than Phe and Trp abolished the ability of RppA to accept malonyl-CoA as a starter, whereas the mutant enzymes Y224F and Y224W were capable of synthesizing THN via the malonyl-CoA-primed reaction. Of the site-directed mutants generated, A305I was found to produce only a triketide pyrone from hexanoyl-CoA as starter substrate, although wild-type RppA synthesizes tetraketide and triketide pyrones in the hexanoyl-CoA-primed reaction. The kinetic parameters of Ala(305) mutants and identification of their products showed that the substitution of Ala(305) by bulky amino acid residues restricted the number of elongations of the growing polyketide chain. Both Tyr(224) (important for starter substrate selection) and Ala(305) (important for intermediate elongation) were found to be conserved in three other RppAs from Streptomyces antibioticus and Streptomyces lividans.