Analysis of the pH- and ligand-induced spectral transitions of tryptophanase: activation of the coenzyme at the early steps of the catalytic cycle.

Tryptophanase has an absorption maximum at 338 nm at high pH and 422 nm at low pH. The 422-nm absorption species has been considered to be the catalytically competent ketoenamine form of the Schiff base of pyridoxal 5'-phosphate with a lysine residue. The 338-nm absorption band showed an intense fluorescence band at 390 nm and not around 500 nm, indicating that the 338-nm absorption species is the substituted aldamine rather than an enolimine form of the Schiff base which has been suggested previously. To explore the mechanism of the enzyme that can exert its catalytic ability at high pH where most of its coenzyme exists as the catalytically incompetent aldamine structure, the reaction of tryptophanase with 3-indolepropionate, a substrate analogue that stops the reaction at the step of the Michaelis complex, was studied at various pH values and analogue concentrations. Kinetic analysis was done based on a scheme involving eight forms of the enzyme, i.e., the liganded and unliganded forms of the ketoenamine, the substituted aldamine structures, and their protonated and deprotonated forms. Kinetic parameters were obtained for each interconversion step. The results showed that the binding of 3-indolepropionate to tryptophanase shifts the equilibrium from the substituted aldamine to the ketoenamine structure over the entire pH region studied. This implies that in the reaction of tryptophanase with tryptophan at high pH, where the enzyme shows maximum activity, the binding of the substrate to the enzyme converts the inactive aldamine form of the coenzyme to the active ketoenamine form. Mechanisms for the activation process, in which a nucleophile is expelled from the aldamine either by steric hindrance of the nucleophile with the ligand or by the negative charge of the ligand alpha-carboxylate group that stabilizes the aldimine structure, were discussed.