The Thermus thermophilus 3-isopropylmalate dehydrogenase (IPMDH) and Escherichia coli isocitrate dehydrogenase (ICDH) are two functionally and evolutionarily related enzymes with distinct substrate specificities. To understand the determinants of substrate specificities of the two proteins, the substrate and coenzyme in IPMDH were docked into their respective binding sites based on the published structure for apo IPMDH and its sequence and structural homology to ICDH. This modeling study suggests that (1) the substrate and coenzyme (NAD) binding modes of IPMDH are significantly different from those of ICDH, (2) the interactions between the substrates and coenzymes help explain the differences in substrate specificities of IPMDH and ICDH, and (3) binding of the substrate and coenzyme should induce a conformational change in the structure of IPMDH.Keywords: docking; isocitrate dehydrogenase; isopropylmalate dehydrogenase; substrate binding
Thermus thermophilus3-isopropylmalate dehydrogenase (IPMDH) and Escherichia coli isocitrate dehydrogenase (ICDH) are two closely related enzymes that catalyze similar reactions in different metabolic pathways. IPMDH functions in the leucine biosynthesis pathway and catalyzes the oxidative decarboxylation of isopropylmalate to a-ketoisocaproate (Imada et al., 1991). ICDH catalyzes a similar decarboxylation reaction in the carbohydrate metabolism (Kornberg, 1966), and converts isocitrate to a-ketoglutarate. The two reactions are shown in Figure IA. Both reactions are postulated to proceed in two steps, with dehydrogenation preceding decarboxylation (Fig. IB) (Grissom & Cleland, 1985; Pirrung et ai., 1994).Most of the postulated key catalytic residues in E. coli ICDH (Hurley et ai., 1991) are conserved in 7: thermophilus lPMDH (Imada et al., 1991;Miyazaki et al., 1992). The two proteins have an overall 30% sequence identity (Fig. 2). The conservation of catalytic residues also extends to the IPMDHs and ICDHs of other species (Fig. 2), suggesting that these proteins may have a common evolutionary origin and structural, functional properties.The substrate specificities of 7: thermophilus lPMDH and E. coli ICDH are, however, very different. ICDH shows no detectable activities for isopropylmalate and IPMDH shows no activity for isocitrate (Miyazaki et ai., 1993). A mammalian form of ICDH has also been extensively investigated (Colman, 1973 , 1978). showed that 7: thermophilus IPMDH has broad substrate specificities against alkyl-malates. Substituting the y-moiety of isopropylmalate with methyl, ethyl, or propyl groups has little effect on the overall catalytic efficiency (kcor/K,,), suggesting that the hydrophobic packing between the substrate and the enzyme-coenzyme complex is not very specific. On the other hand, IPMDH shows no detectable activity against isocitrate, suggesting that the polar or charge-charge interaction with the y-carboxyl group destabilizes the IPMDH-substrate-coenzyme complex . Studies on the roles of catalytic residues of IPMDH are limited. It was shown...