The eukaryotic nucleoside diphosphate (NDP) kinases are hexamers, while the bacterial NDP kinases are tetramers made of small, single domain subunits. These enzymes represent an ideal model for studying the effect of subunit interaction on protein stability. The thermostability of NDP kinases of each class was studied by differential scanning calorimetry and biochemical methods. The hexameric NDP kinase from Dictyostelium discoideum displays one single, irreversible differential scanning calorimetry peak (T m 62°C) over a broad protein concentration, indicating a single step denaturation. The thermal stability of the protein was increased by ADP. The P105G substitution, which affects a loop implicated in subunit contacts, yields a protein that reversibly dissociates to folded monomers at 38°C before the irreversible denaturation occurs (T m 47°C). ADP delays the dissociation, but does not change the T m . These data indicate a "coupling" of the quaternary structure with the tertiary structure in the wild-type, but not in the mutated protein. We describe the x-ray structure of the P105G mutant at 2.2-Å resolution. It is very similar to that of the wild-type protein. Therefore, a minimal change in the structure leads to a dramatic change of protein thermostability. The NDP kinase from Escherichia coli behaves like the P105G mutant of the Dictyostelium NDP kinase. The detailed study of their thermostability is important, since biological effects of thermolabile NDP kinases have been described in several organisms.A large number of proteins are active as homo-or heterooligomers. In some cases, the quaternary structure is needed for allosteric regulation, substrate/product channeling, or signal transduction. In other cases, the biological significance of the quaternary structure is elusive. For instance, several nonallosteric enzymes are homo-oligomers (Jaenicke, 1991). One potential advantage is the contribution of the interaction energy between subunits for the global stabilization of the protein. The stability of oligomeric proteins is by far less studied as compared with monomeric proteins. It is fundamental, however, for understanding their function.Nucleoside diphosphate (NDP) 1 kinase is a suitable model for studying the effect of subunit interaction on protein stability. The high resolution x-ray structures of the NDP kinases from Dictyostelium (Moréra et al., 1994a), Myxococcus xanthus (Williams et al., 1993), Drosophila (Chiadmi et al., 1993), and of the human NDP kinase B (Webb et al., 1995;Moréra et al., 1995b) are now available. On the other hand, the structure of complexes of NDP kinases with nucleotides (Moréra et al., 1994b;Cherfils et al., 1994) as well as the structure of the phosphorylated intermediate (Moréra et al., 1995a) were determined. The subunits are small and are built of one structural domain only. The NDP kinase sequences are highly conserved throughout evolution (Ͼ60% identity between the eukaryotic enzymes, Ͼ45% identity between the procaryotic and the eukaryotic enzymes). A distinctiv...