Biotin protein ligases (BPLs) are enzymes of extraordinary specificity. BirA, the BPL of Escherichia coli biotinylates only a single cellular protein. We report a mutant BirA that attaches biotin to a large number of cellular proteins in vivo and to bovine serum albumin, chloramphenicol acetyltransferase, immunoglobin heavy and light chains, and RNAse A in vitro. The mutant BirA also self biotinylates in vivo and in vitro. The wild type BirA protein is much less active in these reactions. The biotinylation reaction is proximitydependent in that a greater extent of biotinylation was seen when the mutant ligase was coupled to the acceptor proteins than when the acceptors were free in solution. This approach may permit facile detection and recovery of interacting proteins by existing avidin/streptavidin technology.Keywords: biotin protein ligase; protein modification; biotinylation; acyl adenylate; BirA Biotinylation of proteins has routinely been done by chemical means, usually by modification of protein amino groups with biotin-N-hydroxysuccinimide or similar acylating agents. In contrast, enzymatic biotinylation has been limited to the few proteins that normally carry this modification, which are largely biotin-dependent carboxylases and decarboxylases of central metabolism (Chapman-Smith and Cronan Jr. 1999). We supposed that if enzymatic biotinylation could be made less specific, it might provide a means to detect weak (i.e., having dissociation constants >10 −7 M) protein-protein interactions. In this scenario the biotinylating enzyme physically coupled to one of the interacting proteins (the target protein) would be used to biotinylate and thereby tag proteins that interact with the target protein. The biotinylation reaction should tag only those protein molecules that are close in space to the target protein. That is, unlike chemical acylation, enzymatic biotinylation should be proximity-dependent. The specific and extremely tight binding of biotin (K D 10 −13 to 10 −15 M) to streptavidin and avidin would then allow very sensitive detection of biotinylated proteins by a wide variety of robust protocols and low affinity forms of streptavidin and avidin allow efficient purification of biotinylated proteins under mild conditions. However, the biotin protein ligases (BPLs) catalyzing protein biotinylation have exceptional specificities for their protein substrates and thus are not general protein modification enzymes. For example, in vivo, BirA, the BPL of Escherichia coli, biotinylates only a single protein, the BCCP (AccB) subunit of acetyl-CoA carboxylase and other organisms contain less than five biotinylated protein species, indicating these BPLs are similarly specific (McAllister and Coon 1966;Samols et al. 1988;. Therefore, in order to use a BPL as a general biotinylating enzyme, this extraordinary specificity must somehow be overcome. A possible route to this end is based upon the mechanism of the BPL reaction, which proceeds in two steps:1. Biotin + ATP Bio-5Ј-AMP + PPi 2. Bio-5Ј-AMP + apo-Prot...

Biotin synthase is an S-adenosyl-L-methionine (SAM) radical enzyme that inserts sulfur into dethiobiotin to produce biotin. The reaction proceeds through 5'-deoxyadenosyl radical intermediates that become reduced during the sulfur insertion step to give another product of the reaction, 5'-deoxyadenosine. We report that Escherichia coli strains lacking the 5'-methylthioadenosine/S-adenosylhomocysteine nucleosidase encoded by the pfs gene are deficient in biotin synthase activity due to accumulation of 5'-deoxyadenosine, a new substrate of the pfs-encoded nucleosidase. Physiological experiments indicate that lipoic acid synthase, another SAM radical enzyme, is also inhibited by 5'-deoxyadenosine accumulation.

Escherichia coli acetyl-CoA carboxylase (ACC) is composed of four different protein molecules. These proteins form a large but very unstable complex. Hints of a sub-complex between the biotin carboxylase (BC) and biotin carboxyl carrier protein (BCCP) subunits have been reported in the literature, but the complex was not isolated and thus the protein stoichiometry could not be determined. We report isolation of the BC⅐BCCP complex. By use of affinity chromatography using two different affinity tags it was shown that the complex consists of a two BCCP molecules per BC molecule. The molar ratio in the complex is the same as the ratio of the subunit proteins synthesized in vivo. We conclude that the complex consists of a dimer of BC plus four BCCP molecules instead of the 2BC⅐2BCCP complex previously assumed. This subunit ratio allows two conflicting models of the ACC mechanism to be rectified. We also report that the N-terminal 30 or so residues of BCCP are responsible for the interaction of BCCP with BC and that the BC⅐BCCP complex is a substrate for biotinylation in vitro.

Biotin synthase is responsible for the synthesis of biotin from dethiobiotin and sulfur. Although the name of the protein implies that it functions as an enzyme, it has been consistently reported that biotin synthase produces <1 molecule of biotin per molecule of protein in vitro. Moreover, the source of the biotin sulfur atom has been reported to be the [2Fe-2S] center of the protein. Biotin synthase has therefore been designated as a substrate or reactant rather than an enzyme. We report in vivo experiments demonstrating that biotin synthase is catalytic but that catalysis puts the protein at risk of proteolytic destruction.