The molybdenum formylmethanofuran dehydrogenase operon and the tungsten formylmethanofuran dehydrogenase operon from Methanobacterium thermoautotrophicum. Structures and transcriptional regulation.

Methanobacterium thermoautotrophicum contains a tungsten formylmethanofuran dehydrogenase (FwdABCD) and a molybdenum formylmethanofuran dehydrogenase (FmdABC). The fwdHFGDACB operon encoding the tungsten enzyme has recently been characterized. We report here on the structure and expression of the gene cluster encoding the molybdenum enzyme. This gene cluster is composed of three open reading frames (fmdECB). The fmdB gene was found to encode the molybdopterin-dinucleotide-binding subunit harboring the enzyme's active site; FmdB is thus functionally equivalent to FwdB. fmdC encodes a protein with sequence similarity to FwdC in its N-terminal part and with sequence similarity to FwdD in its C-terminal part; FmdC is thus functionally equivalent to FwdC and FwdD. Interestingly, the fmd operon lacks a gene fmdA encoding the subunit FmdA of the molybdenum enzyme. FmdA has the same apparent molecular mass and the same N-terminal amino acid sequence as FwdA and only one DNA sequence encoding for this N-terminal amino acid sequence was found in the M. thermoautotrophicum genome. It is therefore proposed that FmdA and FwdA are encoded by the same gene namely fwdA in the fwd operon. In agreement with this proposal is the finding that fwdA is expressed constitutively: northern-blot analysis of RNA from tungstate- and molybdate-grown cells of M. thermo-autotrophicum revealed that the fwdHFGDACB gene cluster is transcribed in the presence of either molybdate or tungstate in the growth medium whereas the fmdECB gene cluster was only transcribed when molybdate was present.