Human aldose reductase: rate constants for a mechanism including interconversion of ternary complexes by recombinant wild-type enzyme.

We have used transient kinetic data for partial reactions of recombinant human aldose reductase and simulations of progress curves for D-xylose reduction with NADPH and for xylitol oxidation with NADP+ to estimate rate constants for the following mechanism at pH 8.0: E<-->E.NADPH<-->*E.NADPH<-->*E.NADPH.RCHO<-->*E.NADP+.RCH2OH <-->*E.NADP+<--> E.NADP+<-->E. The mechanism includes kinetically significant conformational changes of the two binary E.nucleotide complexes which correspond to the movement of a crystallographically identified nucleotide-clamping loop involved in nucleotide exchange. The magnitude of this conformational clamping is substantial and results in a 100- and 650-fold lowering of the nucleotide dissociation constant in the productive *E.NADPH and *E.NADP+ complexes, respectively. The transient reduction of D-xylose displays burst kinetics consistent with the conformational change preceding NADP+ release (*E.NADP+-->E.NADP+) as the rate-limiting step in the forward direction. The maximum burst rate also displays a large deuterium isotope effect (Dkburst = 3.6-4.1), indicating that hydride transfer contributes significantly to rate limitation of the sequence of steps up to and including release of xylitol. In the reverse reaction, no burst of NADPH production is observed because the hydride transfer step is overall 85% rate-limiting. Even so, the conformational change preceding NADPH release (*E.NADPH-->E.NADPH) still contributes 15% to the rate limitation for reaction in this direction. The estimated rate constant for hydride transfer from NADPH to the aldehyde of D-xylose (130 s-1) is only 5- to 10-fold lower than the corresponding rate constant determined for NADH-dependent carbonyl reduction catalyzed by lactate or liver alcohol dehydrogenase. Hydride transfer from alcohol to NADP+ (0.6 s-1), however, is at least 100- to 1000-fold slower than NAD(+)-dependent alcohol oxidation mediated by these two enzymes, resulting in a bound-state equilibrium constant for aldose reductase which greatly favors the forward reaction. The proposed kinetic model provides a basic set of rate constants for interpretation of kinetic results obtained with aldose reductase mutants generated for the purpose of examining structure-function relationships of different components of the native enzyme.