The yfdXWUVE operon appears to encode proteins that enhance the ability of Escherichia coli MG1655 to survive under acidic conditions. Although the molecular mechanisms underlying this phenotypic behavior remain to be elucidated, findings from structural genomic studies have shown that the structure of YfdW, the protein encoded by the yfdW gene, is homologous to that of the enzyme that mediates oxalate catabolism in the obligate anaerobe Oxalobacter formigenes, O. formigenes formyl coenzyme A transferase (FRC). We now report the first detailed examination of the steady-state kinetic behavior and substrate specificity of recombinant, wild-type YfdW. Our studies confirm that YfdW is a formyl coenzyme A (formyl-CoA) transferase, and YfdW appears to be more stringent than the corresponding enzyme (FRC) in Oxalobacter in employing formyl-CoA and oxalate as substrates. We also report the effects of replacing Trp-48 in the FRC active site with the glutamine residue that occupies an equivalent position in the E. coli protein. The results of these experiments show that Trp-48 precludes oxalate binding to a site that mediates substrate inhibition for YfdW. In addition, the replacement of Trp-48 by Gln-48 yields an FRC variant for which oxalate-dependent substrate inhibition is modified to resemble that seen for YfdW. Our findings illustrate the utility of structural homology in assigning enzyme function and raise the question of whether oxalate catabolism takes place in E. coli upon the up-regulation of the yfdXWUVE operon under acidic conditions.With the completion of genome sequences for several strains of Escherichia coli (6,27,45,61), attention has turned to the annotation of proteins encoded by specific genes of unknown function (56). Deletion studies have shown that the yfdXWUVE operon, in which the yfdX gene is under the control of the EvgAS regulatory system (40), encodes proteins that enhance the ability of E. coli MG1655 to survive under acidic conditions (41). Although the molecular mechanisms underlying this phenotypic behavior remain to be elucidated, the proteins encoded by the yfdW and yfdU genes in this operon (YfdW and YfdU, respectively) are homologous to proteins present in the obligate anaerobe Oxalobacter formigenes (53), O. formigenes formyl coenzyme A transferase (FRC) (2, 30, 46) and oxalyl coenzyme A (oxalyl-CoA) decarboxylase (3, 5). We note that FRC and oxalyl-CoA decarboxylase are essential for the survival of Oxalobacter in that they mediate the conversion of oxalate into formate and CO 2 in a coupled catalytic cycle (Fig. 1). In combination with an oxalate-formate antiporter (OxlT) (29, 60), this cycle is thought to maintain the electrochemical and pH gradients needed for ATP synthesis (1, 35). It has therefore been proposed previously that (i) YfdW catalyzes the conversion of oxalate into oxalyl-CoA by using formyl-CoA as a donor and (ii) the YfdU protein mediates oxalyl-CoA decarboxylation (26). High-resolution X-ray crystallography supports the likely functional similarity of FRC and YfdW...