To date, efforts to switch the cofactor specificity of oxidoreductases from nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH) to nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH) have been made on a caseby-case basis with varying degrees of success. Here we present a straightforward recipe for altering the cofactor specificity of a class of NADPH-dependent oxidoreductases, the ketol-acid reductoisomerases (KARIs). Combining previous results for an engineered NADH-dependent variant of Escherichia coli KARI with available KARI crystal structures and a comprehensive KARI-sequence alignment, we identified key cofactor specificity determinants and used this information to construct five KARIs with reversed cofactor preference. Additional directed evolution generated two enzymes having NADH-dependent catalytic efficiencies that are greater than the wild-type enzymes with NADPH. High-resolution structures of a wild-type/variant pair reveal the molecular basis of the cofactor switch.branched-chain amino acid pathway | cofactor imbalance K etol-acid reductoisomerases (KARI; EC 1.1.1.86) are a family of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH)-dependent oxidoreductases that catalyze an alkyl-migration followed by a ketol-acid reduction of (S)-2-acetolactate (S2AL) and 2-aceto-2-hydroxybutyrate to yield (R)-2,3-dihydroxy-isovalerate and (R)-2,3-dihydroxy-3-methylvalerate, respectively (1), which are essential intermediates in the biosynthesis of branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) (2, 3). The demand for these essential amino acids, used in the preparation of animal feed, human dietary supplements, and pharmaceuticals, is currently estimated to exceed 1,500 tons per year (4). In addition, the BCAA pathway has been engineered to produce fine chemicals and biofuels, including 1-butanol and isobutanol (5, 6). Under the anaerobic conditions preferred for large-scale fermentations, biosynthesis of BCAAs and other products that use this pathway is limited by the pathway's cofactor imbalance and reduced cellular production of NADPH (7,8). One approach to overcoming the cofactor imbalance is to engineer KARI to use NADH generated in glycolysis, thereby enabling anaerobic production of BCAA pathway products (7,8).Efforts to switch the cofactor specificity of oxidoreductases from NADPH to NADH have been made with varying degrees of success (8-17). The three reports of cofactor-switched KARIs (7,8,15) from two different organisms show few commonalities in terms of residues targeted for engineering. A general recipe for switching KARI cofactor specificity would allow metabolic engineers to take advantage of the natural sequence diversity of the KARI family, with concomitant diversity in properties such as expression level, pH tolerance, or thermal stability. By combining a systematic analysis of all reviewed and manually annotated [SwissProt (18)] KARIs, information from our previous work on switching the cofactor specificity of the Escherichia coli KARI (7), and available KARI structures, we have identified a subset of residues in ...