Contribution of tyrosine 6 to the catalytic mechanism of isoenzyme 3-3 of glutathione S-transferase.

The role of the hydroxyl group of tyrosine 6 in the catalytic mechanism of isoenzyme 3-3 of rat glutathione S-transferase has been examined by x-ray crystallography and site-specific replacement of the residue with phenylalanine and evaluation of the catalytic properties of the mutant enzyme. This particuar tyrosine residue is conserved in the sequences of all of the cytosolic enzymes and is found, in crystal structures of both isoenzyme 3-3 from the mu-gene class and an isoenzyme from the pi-gene class, to be proximal to the sulfur of glutathione (GSH) or glutathione sulfonate bound at the active site. The 2.2-A structure of the binary complex of isoenzyme 3-3 and GSH indicates that the hydroxyl group of Tyr6 is located 3.2-3.5 A from the sulfur of GSH, well within hydrogen bonding distance. Removal of the hydroxyl group of Tyr6 has essentially no effect on the dissociation constant (22 +/- 3 microM) for GSH. Nevertheless the Y6F mutant exhibits a turnover number which is only about 1% that of the native enzyme when assayed at pH 6.5 with either 1-chloro-2,4-dinitrobenzene (CDNB) or 4-phenyl-3-buten-2-one. UV difference spectra of the binary enzyme-GSH complexes suggest that the predominant ionization state of GSH in the active site of the Y6F mutant is the neutral thiol (e.g. EY6F.GSH) which is in contrast to the native enzyme in which the thiol is substantially deprotonated (e.g. E.GS-). Spectrophotometric titration suggests that the pKa of the thiol is 6.9 +/- 0.3 in the E.GSH complex and greater than or equal to 8 in the EY6F.GSH binary complex. In addition, the pH dependence of kcat/KmCDNB reveals that the reactions catalyzed by the native enzyme and the Y6F mutant are dependent on a single ionization in the E.GSH and EY6F.GSH complexes with pKa = 6.2 +/- 0.1 and 7.8 +/- 0.3, respectively. The results suggest that the hydrogen bond between Tyr6 and the enzyme-bound nucleophile helps to lower the pKa of GSH in the binary enzyme-substrate complex.