Mechanistic studies of the biosynthesis of 3,6-dideoxyhexoses in Yersinia pseudotuberculosis: purification and characterization of CDP-4-keto-6-deoxy-D-glucose-3-dehydrase.

CDP-4-keto-6-deoxy-D-glucose-3-dehydrase (E1) is a PMP-dependent enzyme which plays an essential role in C-O bond cleavage leading to the formation of 3,6-dideoxyhexoses. Although E1 catalysis has long been recognized as a unique biological deoxygenation reaction, the catalytic mechanism of this unusual enzyme has never been fully elucidated. The lack of methods that would allow this enzyme's activity to be monitored directly has been an impediment to E1 purification and has consequently hampered the mechanistic studies. In order to circumvent this problem, we have developed a few convenient and sensitive methods to facilitate the E1 assay. The first method relies on the fact that E1-catalyzed dehydration is initiated by a proton abstraction from C-4' of the PMP-substrate adduct. By using a tritium-labeled cofactor in the incubation that was later quenched with charcoal, the amount of E1 present could be determined from the amount of released tritium in the supernatant. The second method was designed on the basis of the expectation that E1 will bind and rupture the C-F bond of a substrate analogue, CDP-4-keto-3,6-dideoxy-3-fluoro-D-glucose, which was derived from CDP-3-deoxy-3-fluoro-D-glucose. Since the bond length and electronegativity of the C-F group are similar to those of a C-OH group, we anticipated that the proposed compound would be processed by E1, an assumption which was later substantiated. Another assay useful for measuring E1 activity couples the E1 transformation with the subsequent reduction step catalyzed by CDP-6-deoxy-delta 3,4-D-glucoseen reductase (E3) to a thiobarbituric acid (TBA) reaction. Since the condensation product of TBA and malonaldehyde derived from oxidative degradation of the E1/E3 product gave a pink chromophore at 532 nm with a known absorption coefficient, the yield of deoxysugar formation could be directly deduced on the basis of the observed absorbance. The most conclusive evidence confirming the role of E1 was attained by a GC/MS assay which permits an unambiguous identification of the deoxysugar product generated from the E1 and E3 reactions. With these convenient and sensitive assays in hand, we have established a sequence of four columns that was effective in consistently producing pure E1 from Yersinia pseudotuberculosis. The overall purification may be as high as 26,000-fold. This purified enzyme consists of a single polypeptide chain in its native form, and the estimated molecular weight is 49,000.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)