Recent studies have demonstrated that carbon-oxygen (CH···O) hydrogen bonds have important roles in S-adenosylmethionine (AdoMet) recognition and catalysis in methyltransferases. Here, we investigate noncovalent interactions that occur between the AdoMet sulfur cation and oxygen atoms in methyltransferase active sites. These interactions represent sulfur-oxygen (S···O) chalcogen bonds in which the oxygen atom donates a lone pair of electrons to the σ antibonding orbital of the AdoMet sulfur atom. Structural, biochemical, and computational analyses of an asparagine mutation in the lysine methyltransferase SET7/9 that abolishes AdoMet S···O chalcogen bonding reveal that this interaction enhances substrate binding affinity relative to the product S-adenosylhomocysteine. Corroborative quantum mechanical calculations demonstrate that sulfonium systems form strong S···O chalcogen bonds relative to their neutral thioether counterparts. An inspection of high-resolution crystal structures reveals the presence of AdoMet S···O chalcogen bonding in different classes of methyltransferases, illustrating that these interactions are not limited to SET domain methyltransferases. Together, these results demonstrate that S···O chalcogen bonds contribute to AdoMet recognition and can enable methyltransferases to distinguish between substrate and product.

Measuring the strength of the hydrogen bonds between DNA base pairs is of vital importance for understanding how our genetic code is physically accessed and recognized in cells, particularly during replication and transcription. Therefore, it is important to develop probes for these key hydrogen bonds (H-bonds) that dictate events critical to cellular function, such as the localized melting of DNA. The vibrations of carbonyl bonds are well-known probes of their H-bonding environment, and their signals can be observed with infrared (IR) spectroscopy. Yet, pinpointing a single bond of interest in the complex IR spectrum of DNA is challenging due to the large number of carbonyl signals that overlap with each other. Here, we develop a method using isotope editing and infrared (IR) spectroscopy to isolate IR signals from the thymine (T) C2=O carbonyl. We use solvatochromatic studies to show that the TC2=O signal’s position in the IR spectrum is sensitive to the H-bonding capacity of the solvent. Our results indicate that C2=O of a single T base within DNA duplexes experiences weak H-bonding interactions. This finding is consistent with the existence of a third, noncanonical CH···O H-bond between adenine and thymine in both Watson–Crick and Hoogsteen base pairs in DNA.

The C-terminal domain of cobalamin-dependent methionine synthase (MetH) has an essential role in catalyzing the reactivation of the enzyme following the oxidation of its cobalamin cofactor. This reactivation occurs through reductive methylation of the cobalamin using S-adenosylmethionine (AdoMet) as the methyl donor. Herein, we examine the molecular recognition of AdoMet by the MetH reactivation domain utilizing structural, biochemical, and computational approaches. Crystal structures of the Escherichia coli MetH reactivation domain in complex with AdoMet, the methyl transfer product S-adenosylhomocysteine (AdoHcy), and the AdoMet analogue inhibitor sinefungin illustrate that the ligands exhibit an analogous conformation within the solvent-exposed substrate binding cleft of the enzyme. AdoMet binding is stabilized by an intramolecular sulfur-oxygen chalcogen bond between the sulfonium and carboxylate groups of the substrate and by water-mediated carbon-oxygen hydrogen bonding between the sulfonium cation and the side chains of Glu1097 and Glu1128 that bracket the substrate binding cleft. AdoMet and sinefungin exhibited similar binding affinities for the MetH reactivation domain, whereas AdoHcy displayed an affinity for the enzyme that was an order of magnitude lower. Mutations of Glu1097 and Glu1128 diminished the AdoMet/AdoHcy binding selectivity ratio to approximately 2-fold, underscoring the role of these residues in enabling the enzyme to discriminate between the substrate and product. Together, these findings indicate that Glu1097 and Glu1128 in MetH promote high-affinity recognition of AdoMet and that sinefungin and potentially other AdoMet-based methyltransferase inhibitors can abrogate MetH reactivation, which would result in off-target effects associated with alterations in methionine homeostasis and one-carbon metabolism.

The level of interest in probing the strength of noncovalent interactions in DNA duplexes is high, as these weak forces dictate the range of suprastructures the double helix adopts under different conditions, in turn directly impacting the biological functions and industrial applications of duplexes that require making and breaking them to access the genetic code. However, few experimental tools can measure these weak forces embedded within large biological suprastructures in the native solution environment. Here, we develop experimental methods for detecting the presence of a single noncovalent interaction [a hydrogen bond (Hbond)] within a large DNA duplex in solution and measure its formation enthalpy (ΔH f ). We report that introduction of a H-bond into the TC2�O group from the noncanonical nucleobase 2-aminopurine produces an expected decrease ∼10 ± 0.76 cm −1 (from ∼1720 cm −1 in Watson−Crick to ∼1710 cm −1 in 2-aminopurine), which correlates with an enthalpy of ∼0.93 ± 0.066 kcal/mol for this interaction.

The last 15 years have witnessed tremendous progress in elucidating the roles of chromatin modifications in transcription regulation, DNA repair, replication, recombination, and other genomic processes. In this issue of Biopolymers, a series of reviews will summarize recent advances in our understanding of chromatin modifying enzymes and explore unresolved questions with respect to their regulation and functions in gene expression and other nuclear processes. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Biopolymers 99: 95–97, 2013.