The particulate methane monooxygenase (pMMO) is known to be very difficult to study mainly due to its unusual activity instability in vitro. By cultivating Methylococcus capsulatus (Bath) under methane stress conditions and high copper levels in the growth medium, membranes highly enriched in the pMMO with exceptionally stable activity can be isolated from these cells. Purified and active pMMO can be subsequently obtained from these membrane preparations using protocols in which an excess of reductants and anaerobic conditions were maintained during membrane solubilization by dodecyl ␤-D-maltoside and purification by chromatography. The pMMO was found to be the major constituent in these membranes, constituting 60 -80% of total membrane proteins. The dominant species of the pMMO was found to consist of three subunits, ␣, ␤, and ␥, with an apparent molecular mass of 45, 26, and 23 kDa, respectively. A second species of the pMMO, a proteolytically processed version of the enzyme, was found to be composed of three subunits, ␣, ␤, and ␥, with an apparent molecular mass of 35, 26, and 23 kDa, respectively. The ␣ and ␣ subunits from these two forms of the pMMO contain identical N-terminal sequences. The ␥ subunit, however, exhibits variation in its N-terminal sequence. The pMMO is a copper-containing protein only and shows a requirement for Cu(I) ions. Approximately 12-15 Cu ions per 94-kDa monomeric unit were observed. The pMMO is sensitive to dioxygen tension. On the basis of dioxygen sensitivity, three kinetically distinct forms of the enzyme can be distinguished. A slow but air-stable form, which is converted into a "pulsed" state upon direct exposure to atmospheric oxygen pressure, is considered as type I pMMO. This form was the subject of our pMMO isolation effort. Other forms (types II and III) are deactivated to various extents upon exposure to atmospheric dioxygen pressure. Under inactivating conditions, these unstable forms release protons to the buffer (ϳ10 H ؉ /94-kDa monomeric unit) and eventually become completely inactive.The enzyme methane monooxygenase, found in methanotrophic bacteria, catalyzes the conversion of methane to methanol using dioxygen as a co-substrate at ambient temperatures and pressures (1, 2). This system has attracted considerable attention, since it provides an ideal natural model to study methane activation and functionalization, a subject of significant current interest (3). Two distinct species of methane monooxygenase (MMO) 1 are known to exist at different cellular locations, a cytoplasmic (soluble) MMO and a membrane-bound (particulate) MMO (4). The soluble MMO (sMMO) is a complex threecomponent system consisting of a hydroxylase, a reductase, and a small regulatory protein (4). The sMMO has been investigated extensively by several research groups (5-21). The xray crystal structure of the sMMO hydroxylase isolated from Methylococcus capsulatus (Bath) has been solved (22, 23). The hydroxylase active site contains a non-heme binuclear iron cluster. In contrast, the particulat...

A major challenge in drug discovery is to distinguish the molecular targets of a bioactive compound from the hundreds to thousands of additional gene products that respond indirectly to changes in the activity of the targets. Here, we present an integrated computational-experimental approach for computing the likelihood that gene products and associated pathways are targets of a compound. This is achieved by filtering the mRNA expression profile of compound-exposed cells using a reverse-engineered model of the cell's gene regulatory network. We apply the method to a set of 515 whole-genome yeast expression profiles resulting from a variety of treatments (compounds, knockouts and induced expression), and correctly enrich for the known targets and associated pathways in the majority of compounds examined. We demonstrate our approach with PTSB, a growth inhibitory compound with a previously unknown mode of action, by predicting and validating thioredoxin and thioredoxin reductase as its target.

Protein film voltammetry is a relatively new approach to studying redox enzymes, the concept being that a sample of a redox protein is configured as a film on an electrode and probed by a variety of electrochemical techniques. The enzyme molecules are bound at the electrode surface in such a way that there is fast electron transfer and complete retention of the chemistry of the active site that is observed in more conventional experiments. Modulations of the electrode potential or catalytic turnover result in the movement of electrons to, from, and within the enzyme; this is detected as a current that varies in characteristic ways with time and potential. Henceforth, the potential dimension is introduced into enzyme kinetics. The presence of additional intrinsic redox centers for providing fast intramolecular electron transfer between a buried active site and the protein surface is an important factor. Centers which carry out cooperative two-electron transfer, most obviously flavins, produce a particularly sharp signal that allows them to be observed, even as transient states, when spectroscopic methods are not useful. High catalytic activity produces a large amplification of the current, and useful information can be obtained even if the coverage on the electrode is low. Certain enzymes display optimum activity at a particular potential, and this can be both mechanistically informative and physiologically relevant. This paper outlines the principles of protein film voltammetry by discussing some recent results from this laboratory.

The multi-heme cytochromes from Shewanella oneidensis associated with the dissimilatory metal reduction (DMR) pathway have been investigated using the technique of protein film voltammetry (PFV). Using PFV, we have interrogated each of the multi-heme cytochromes (MtrA, STC, and solubilized versions of the membrane-bound proteins CymA, OmcA, and MtrC) under identical conditions for the first time. Each cytochrome reveals a broad envelope of voltammetric response, indicative of multiple redox cofactors that span a range of potential of approximately 300 mV. Our studies show that, when considered as an aggregate pathway, the multiple hemes of the DMR cytochromes provide a "window" of operating potential for electron transfer to occur from the cellular interior to the exterior spanning values of -250 to 0 mV (at circumneutral values of pH). Similarly, each cytochrome supports interfacial electron transfer at rates on the order of 200 s(-1). These data are taken together to suggest a model of electron transport where a wide window of potential allows for charge transfer from the cellular interior to the exterior to support bioenergetics.

Parallel X-ray absorption edge and EPR studies of the particulate methane monooxygenase in situ reveal that the enzyme contains unusually high levels of copper ions with a significant portion of the copper ions existing as Cu(I) in the “as-isolated” form (70−80%). The observation of high levels of reduced copper in a monooxygenase is surprising considering that the natural cosubstrate of the enzyme is dioxygen. Toward clarifying the roles of the various copper ions in the enzyme, we have successfully prepared different states of the protein in the membrane-bound form at various levels of reduction using dithionite, dioxygen, and ferricyanide. EPR intensity analysis of the fully-oxidized preparations indicates that the bulk of copper ions are arranged in cluster units. The fully-reduced protein obtained by reduction by dithionite has been used to initiate the single turnover of the enzyme in the presence of dioxygen. Differential reactivity toward dioxygen was observed upon analyzing the copper reduction levels in these synchronized preparations. The enzyme is capable of supporting turnover in the absence of external electron donors in the highly reduced states. These results suggest the presence of at least two classes of copper ions in the particulate methane monooxygenase. As a working hypothesis, we have referred to these classes of copper ions as (1) the catalytic (C) clusters, which function principally as the catalytic core of the enzyme, and (2) the electron-transfer (E) clusters, which are presumed to be the source of endogenous reducing equivalents and therefore function in an electron-transfer capacity.