Protein engineering of alcohol dehydrogenase--1. Effects of two amino acid changes in the active site of yeast ADH-1.

One of the promises held out by protein engineering is the ability to alter predictably the properties of an enzyme to enable it to find new substrates or catalyse existing substrates more efficiently, such manipulations being of interest both enzymologically and, potentially, industrially. It has been postulated that in yeast alcohol dehydrogenase (YADH-1) certain amino acids such as Trp 93 and Thr 48 constrict the active site due to their bulky side chains and thus impede catalysis of molecules larger than ethanol. To study effects of enlarging the active site we have made two changes into YADH-1, replacing Trp 93 with Phe and Thr 48 with Ser. Kinetic experiments showed that this enzyme had marked increases in reaction velocity for the n-alcohols propanol, butanol, pentanol, hexanol, heptanol, octanol and cinnamyl alcohol compared to the parent, agreeing with the prediction that expanding the active site should facilitate the oxidation of larger alcohols. The substrate affinities were slightly reduced in the altered enzyme, possibly due to its having reduced hydrophobicity at Phe 93.