CYP4A11, the principal known human fatty acid -hydroxylase, has been expressed as a polyhistidine-tagged protein and purified to homogeneity. Based on an alignment with P450 BM-3 , the CYP4A11 L131F mutant has been constructed and similarly expressed. The two proteins are spectroscopically indistinguishable, but wildtype CYP4A11 primarily catalyzes -hydroxylation, and the L131F mutant only -1 hydroxylation, of lauric acid. The L131F mutant is highly uncoupled in that it slowly ( -1)-hydroxylates lauric acid yet consumes NADPH at approximately the same rate as the wild-type enzyme. Wild-type CYP4A11 is inactivated by 1-aminobenzotriazole under turnover conditions but the L131F mutant is not. This observation, in conjunction with the binding affinities of substituted imidazoles for the two proteins, indicates that the L131F mutation decreases access of exogenous substrates to the heme site. Leu-131 thus plays a key role in controlling the regioselectivity of substrate hydroxylation and the extent of coupled versus uncoupled enzyme turnover. A further important finding is that the substituted imidazoles bind more weakly to CYP4A11 and its L131F mutant when these proteins are reduced by NADPH-cytochrome P450 reductase than by dithionite. This finding suggests that the ferric enzyme undergoes a conformational change that depends on both reduction of the iron and the presence of cytochrome P450 reductase and NADPH.CYP4A11, one of the three known members of the human CYP4 family (1-4), is the only established fatty acid -hydroxylase in human liver and kidney (5, 6). Little is actually known about the structure and function of CYP4A11 other than its fatty acid hydroxylation activity and its requirement for both cytochrome P450 reductase and cytochrome b 5 for optimal activity (2). In the presence of these electron transfer partners, CYP4A11 catalyzes the -hydroxylation of lauric, palmitic, and arachidonic acids with turnover numbers of 9.8, 2.2, and 0.6 min Ϫ1 , but it does not hydroxylate prostaglandins (2). The paucity of information on this enzyme is unfortunate, because current evidence suggests that it may play an important role in human physiology and may be a potential drug target. These conclusions derive from studies with rats which show that (a) 20-hydroxyeicosatetraenoic acid, the -hydroxylation product of arachidonic acid, is a potent vasoconstrictor (7, 8), (b) 20-hydroxyeicosatetraenoic acid is a major arachidonic acid metabolite in the spontaneously hypertensive rat (9), and (c) inhibition of arachidonic acid -hydroxylation by 17-octadecynoic acid alters renal function (10).Most of our understanding of CYP4A11 derives from an extrapolation of the available information on rat CYP4A1, with which it exhibits 76% sequence identity (1). A defining feature of the CYP4A enzymes is their ability to favor -over ( -1)-hydroxylation, a preference that requires the thermodynamically disfavored breaking of a strong primary terminal methyl C-H bond rather than a weaker secondary C-H bond of the -1 (or -n, n Ͼ 0) methyl...