Site and significance of chemically modifiable cysteine residues in glutamate dehydrogenase of Clostridium symbiosum and the use of protection studies to measure coenzyme binding.

Protein chemical studies of NAD(+)-dependent glutamate dehydrogenase (GDH; EC 1.4.1.2) from Clostridium symbiosum indicate only two cysteine residues/subunit, in good agreement with the gene sequence. Experiments with various thiol-modifying reagents reveal that in native clostridial GDH only one of these two cysteines is accessible for reaction. This residue does not react with iodoacetate, iodoacetamide, N-ethylmaleimide or N-phenylmaleimide, but reaction with either p-chloromercuribenzene sulphonate or 5,5'-dithiobis(2-nitrobenzoic acid) causes complete inactivation, preventable by NAD+ or NADH but not by glutamate or 2-oxoglutarate. Protection studies with combinations of substrates show that glutamate enhances protection by NADH, whereas 2-oxoglutarate diminishes it. These studies were also used to determine a dissociation constant (0.69 mM) for the enzyme-NAD+ complex. Similar data for NADH indicated mildly cooperative binding with a Hill coefficient of 1.32. The significance of these results is discussed in the light of the high-resolution crystallographic structure for clostridial GDH and in relation to information for GDH from other sources.