The heterohexameric minichromosome maintenance (MCM2-7) complex is an ATPase that serves as the central replicative helicase in eukaryotes. During initiation, the ring-shaped MCM2-7 particle is thought to open to facilitate loading onto DNA. The conformational state accessed during ring opening, the interplay between ATP binding and MCM2-7 architecture, and the use of these events in the regulation of DNA unwinding are poorly understood. To address these issues in isolation from the regulatory complexity of existing eukaryotic model systems, we investigated the structure/function relationships of a naturally minimized MCM2-7 complex from the microsporidian parasite Encephalitozoon cuniculi. Electron microscopy and small-angle X-ray scattering studies show that, in the absence of ATP, MCM2-7 spontaneously adopts a lefthanded, open-ring structure. Nucleotide binding does not promote ring closure but does cause the particle to constrict in a two-step process that correlates with the filling of high-and low-affinity ATPase sites. Our findings support the idea that an open ring forms the default conformational state of the isolated MCM2-7 complex, and they provide a structural framework for understanding the multiphasic ATPase kinetics observed in different MCM2-7 systems. T he replisome is a large macromolecular machine that coordinates the activity of multiple functional components to ensure the faithful and timely duplication of DNA. Replisome progression is powered, in part, by hexameric helicases, which unwind parental duplexes to provide template strands for DNA synthesis. Because of their ring-shaped structure, the encirclement of single-or double-stranded DNA by replicative helicases is topologically restricted. This restriction can be overcome by either the direct assembly of the motor onto DNA (1-3) or dedicated loading factors that assist ring opening (1, 4, 5). How and why different hexameric helicases use a particular strategy are long-standing questions.The eukaryotic replicative helicase is composed of six distinct but homologous ATPases associated with various cellular activities (AAA+) subunits, collectively termed the minichromosome maintenance (MCM2-7) complex (6, 7). During the G1-phase of the cell cycle, MCM2-7 heterohexamers are loaded onto DNA by the origin recognition complex together with the Cdc6 and Cdt1 proteins (8, 9). As cells enter S-phase, MCM2-7 is activated through phosphorylation of Mcm2, Mcm4, and Mcm6 by the Dbf4-dependent Cdc7 kinase (10, 11) and the chaperoned association of two accessory factors, Cdc45 and GINS (11). The resultant Cdc45-MCM-GINS (CMG) complex then translocates in the 3′→5′ direction along the leading strand, displacing the lagging strand to facilitate DNA unwinding (12, 13).Studies of both Saccharomyces cerevisiae (Sce) and Drosophila melanogaster (Dme) MCM2-7 indicated that the helicase ring spontaneously opens between the Mcm2 and Mcm5 subunits (14-16). This breach has been proposed to act as a gate by which DNA enters into the motor interior. What triggers t...