Allantoinase is a suspected dinuclear metalloenzyme that catalyzes the hydrolytic cleavage of the fivemember ring of allantoin (5-ureidohydantoin) to form allantoic acid. Recombinant Escherichia coli allantoinase purified from overproducing cultures amended with 2.5 mM zinc, 1 mM cobalt, or 1 mM nickel ions was found to possess ϳ1. Absorbance spectroscopy of the cobalt species reveals a band centered at 570 nm consistent with five-coordinate geometry. Dithiothreitol is a competitive inhibitor of the enzyme, with significant K i differences for the zinc and cobalt species (237 and 795 M, respectively). Circular dichroism spectroscopy revealed that the zinc enzyme utilizes only the S isomer of allantoin, whereas the cobalt allantoinase prefers the S isomer, but also hydrolyzes the R isomer at about 1/10 the rate. This is the first report for metal content of allantoinase from any source.Allantoinase (EC 3.5.2.5), present in a wide variety of bacteria, fungi, and plants, as well as a few animals, such as fish and amphibians, catalyzes the conversion of allantoin (5-ureidohydantoin) to allantoic acid by hydrolytic cleavage of the five-member hydantoin ring (33, 52). Allantoin is a key intermediate in nitrogen metabolism of leguminous plants, such as soybean (Fig. 1), where ureides provide the major transport form of symbiotically fixed dinitrogen (29,43,48,55). Until recently, it was thought that allantoin was formed directly from uric acid by the action of uric acid oxidase (39); however, it has now been established that the true product of soybean uric acid oxidase is 5-hydroxyisourate (22), which is then acted upon by the enzyme hydroxyisourate hydrolase to yield 2-oxo-4-hydroxy-4-carboxy-5-ureidoimidazoline (42). This compound is then converted to allantoin, most likely by a yet unidentified enzyme. The product of allantoin hydrolysis, allantoate, is sequentially converted in soybean to ureidoglycine, ureidoglycolate, and glyoxylate with the ammonia released during these reactions utilized for plant cell growth. Variations of this pathway occur in other organisms, including Escherichia coli, which can grow on allantoin as the sole nitrogen source, but not as the sole carbon source. The E. coli allantoinase gene is part of a 12-gene regulon involved in allantoin degradation and nitrogen assimilation, and these genes are expressed only when the cells are grown under anaerobic conditions (10).On the basis of limited sequence similarities, allantoinase was suggested to belong to a broad family of metal-dependent amidohydrolases (17). Members of this family contain either mononuclear metal sites, such as the zinc site found in adenosine deaminase (56) and the iron site in cytosine deaminase (57), or dinuclear sites, such as the di-nickel site documented to occur in urease (20) and the di-zinc sites of dihydroorotase (47) and hydantoinase (1, 2, 8). Some, but not all, dinuclear hydrolase family members have their two metals bridged by a carbamylated lysine ligand (1,2,4,7,8,20,47). Significantly, we find that allantoi...