Annexation of a high-activity enzyme in a synthetic three-enzyme complex greatly decreases the degree of substrate channeling.

The self-assembled three-enzyme complex containing triosephosphate isomerase (TIM), aldolase (ALD), and fructose 1,6-biphosphatase (FBP) was constructed via a mini-scaffoldin containing three different cohesins and the three dockerin-containing enzymes. This enzyme complex exhibited 1 order of magnitude higher initial reaction rates than the mixture of noncomplexed three enzymes. In this enzyme cascade reactions, the reaction mediated by ALD was the rate-limiting step. To understand the in-depth role of the rate-limiting enzyme ALD in influencing the substrate channeling effect of synthetic enzyme complexes, low-activity ALD from Thermotoga maritima was replaced with a similar-size ALD isolated from Thermus thermophilus, where the latter had more than 5 times specific activity of the former. The synthetic three-enzyme complexes annexed with either low-activity or high-activity ALDs exhibited higher initial reaction rates than the mixtures of the two-enzyme complex (TIM-FBP) and the nonbound low-activity or high activity ALD at the same enzyme concentration. It was also found that the annexation of more high-activity ALD in the synthetic enzyme complexes drastically decreased the degree of substrate channeling from 7.5 to 1.5. These results suggested that the degree of substrate channeling in synthetic enzyme complexes depended on the enzyme choice. This study implied that the construction of synthetic enzyme enzymes in synthetic cascade pathways could be a very important tool to accrelerate rate-limiting steps controlled by low-activity enzymes.