Starch phosphorylase from Corynebacterium callunae is a dimeric protein in which each mol of 90 kDa subunit contains 1 mol pyridoxal 59-phosphate as an active-site cofactor. To determine the mechanism by which phosphate or sulfate ions bring about a greater than 500-fold stabilization against irreversible inactivation at elevated temperatures~Ն50 8C!, enzyme0oxyanion interactions and their role during thermal denaturation of phosphorylase have been studied. By binding to a protein site distinguishable from the catalytic site with dissociation constants of K sulfate ϭ 4.5 mM and K phosphate Ϸ 16 mM, dianionic oxyanions induce formation of a more compact structure of phosphorylase, manifested by~a! an increase by about 5% in the relative composition of the a-helical secondary structure,~b! reduced 1 H0 2 H exchange, and~c! protection of a cofactor fluorescence against quenching by iodide. Irreversible loss of enzyme activity is triggered by the release into solution of pyridoxal 59-phosphate, and results from subsequent intermolecular aggregation driven by hydrophobic interactions between phosphorylase subunits that display a temperature-dependent degree of melting of secondary structure. By specifically increasing the stability of the dimer structure of phosphorylasẽ probably due to tightened intersubunit contacts!, phosphate, and sulfate, this indirectly~1! preserves a functional active site up to Ϸ50 8C, and~2! stabilizes the covalent protein cofactor linkage up to Ϸ70 8C. The effect on thermostability shows a sigmoidal and saturatable dependence on the concentration of phosphate, with an apparent binding constant at 50 8C of Ϸ25 mM. The extra stability conferred by oxyanion-ligand binding to starch phosphorylase is expressed as a dramatic shift of the entire denaturation pathway to a Ϸ20 8C higher value on the temperature scale.Keywords: a-glucan phosphorylase; denaturation mechanism; oxyanion ligand; phosphate stabilization Unlike a great number of a-d-glycoside hydrolases, a-1,4-dglucan phosphorylases catalyze the degradation of a-1,4-d-glucan molecules by using phosphate rather than water as an acceptor of the transferred glucosyl moiety, as shown in Equation 1 where N is the degree of polymerization of the a-1,4-d-glucan.Therefore, interactions between the enzyme and the substrate phosphate play an essential role in the catalytic cycle of phosphorylase and contribute to binding energy in the ground state and the transition state of the reaction~Johnson et al