Mg2+‐dependent, Li+‐sensitive phosphatases are a widely distributed family of enzymes with significant importance throughout the biological kingdom. Inositol monophosphatase (IMPase) is an important target of Li+‐based therapeutic agents in manic depressive disorders. However, despite decades of intense research efforts, the precise mechanism of Li+‐induced inhibition of IMPase remains obscured. Here we describe a structural investigation of the Li+ binding site in staphylococcal IMPase I (SaIMPase I) using X–ray crystallography. The biochemical study indicated common or overlapping binding sites for Mg2+ and Li+ in the active site of SaIMPase I. The crystal structure of the SaIMPase I ternary product complex shows the presence of a phosphate and three Mg2+ ions (namely Mg1, Mg2 and Mg3) in the active site. As Li+ is virtually invisible in X–ray crystallography, competitive displacement of Mg2+ ions from the SaIMPase I ternary product complex as a function of increasing LiCl concentration was used to identify the Li+ binding site. In this approach, the disappearing electron density of Mg2+ ions due to Li+ ion binding was traced, and the Mg2+ ion present at the Mg2 binding site was found to be replaced. Moreover, based on a detailed comparative investigation of the phosphate orientation and coordination states of Mg2+ binding sites in enzyme–substrate and enzyme–product complexes, inhibition mechanisms for Li+ and Mg2+ are proposed.
Database
The atomic coordinates for the SaIMPase I ternary complex, SaIMPase I in 50 mm LiCl, SaIMPase I in 100 mm LiCl and SaIMPase I in 0 mm MgCl2 have been submitted to the Protein Data Bank under accession numbers http://www.rcsb.org/pdb/search/structidSearch.do?structureId=4G61, http://www.rcsb.org/pdb/search/structidSearch.do?structureId=4I40, http://www.rcsb.org/pdb/search/structidSearch.do?structureId=4I3Y and http://www.rcsb.org/pdb/search/structidSearch.do?structureId=4PTK, respectively.
Structured digital abstract
SaIMPase-I and SaIMPase-I bind by x-ray crystallography ( View interaction)