Kinetic evidence of a noncatalytic substrate binding site that regulates activity in Legionella pneumophila L-serine dehydratase.

The L-serine dehydratase from Legionella pneumophila (lpLSD) has recently been shown to contain a domain (β domain) that has a high degree of structural homology with the ASB domain of d-3-phosphoglycerate dehydrogenase (PGDH) from Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Furthermore, this domain has been shown by sequence homology to be present in all bacterial L-serine dehydratases that utilize an Fe-S catalytic center. In PGDH, L-serine binds to the ACT domain to inhibit catalytic activity. However, substrate must be bound to the ASB domain for serine to exert its effect. As such, the ASB domain acts as a codomain for the action of L-serine. Pre-steady-state kinetic analysis of L-serine binding to lpLSD demonstrates that L-serine binds to a second noncatalytic site and produces a conformational change in the enzyme. The rate of this conformational change is too slow for its participation in the catalytic cycle but rather occurs prior to catalysis to produce an activated form of the enzyme. That the conformational change must occur prior to catalysis is shown by a lag in the production of product that exhibits essentially the same rate constant as the conformational change. The second, noncatalytic site for L-serine is likely to be the ASB domain (β domain) of lpLSD that functions in a manner similar to that in PGDH. A mechanism whose overall effect is to keep L-serine levels from accumulating to high levels while not completely depleting the L-serine pool in the bacterial cell is proposed.