Glu-60 of the zinc-dependent Thermoanaerobacter brockii alcohol dehydrogenase (TbADH) is a strictly conserved residue in all members of the alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) family. Unlike most other ADHs, the crystal structures of TbADH and its analogs, ADH from Clostridium beijerinckii (CbADH), exhibit a unique zinc coordination environment in which this conserved residue is directly coordinated to the catalytic zinc ion in the native form of the enzymes. To explore the role of Glu-60 in TbADH catalysis, we have replaced it by alanine (E60A-TbADH) and aspartate (E60D-TbADH). Steady-state kinetic measurements show that the catalytic efficiency of these mutants is only four-and eightfold, respectively, lower than that of wild-type TbADH. We applied X-ray absorption fine-structure (EXAFS) and near-UV circular dichroism to characterize the local environment around the catalytic zinc ion in the variant enzymes in their native, cofactor-bound, and inhibited forms. We show that the catalytic zinc site in the studied complexes of the variant enzymes exhibits minor changes relative to the analogous complexes of wild-type TbADH. These moderate changes in the kinetic parameters and in the zinc ion environment imply that the Glu-60 in TbADH does not remain bound to the catalytic zinc ion during catalysis. Furthermore, our results suggest that a water molecule replaces this residue during substrate turnover.Keywords: Alcohol dehydrogenase; metalloenzyme; glutamate; active site; X-ray absorption Interconversions of alcohols, aldehydes, and ketones are essential processes in both prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Several catalytic mechanisms for alcohol dehydrogenases (ADHs) have been proposed based on accumulating structural and spectroscopic evidence gathered from the moststudied enzyme, horse liver ADH (HLADH; Bertini 1986; Wilkinson 1987). The oxidation of alcohols requires a net removal of two hydrogen atoms from the substrate. This dehydrogenation process is known to proceed by coupled processes of proton abstraction and hydride ion transfer. The two main classes of structural mechanisms based on a proton relay system that have been proposed for HLADH differ specifically in the hypothesized coordination of the zinc ion during catalysis. One mechanism involves the displacement of the zinc-bound water by the alcohol substrate, and so, the zinc ion remains tetrahedrally coordinated during catalysis (Dunn et al. 1975;Eklund et al. 1982). Alternatively, the substrate molecule is added to the tetrahedral zinc ion to form penta-coordinated zinc (Dworschack and Plapp 1977;Makinen et al. 1983).Thermoanaerobacter brockii ADH (TbADH) is a medium-chain, NADP + -linked (Lamed and Zeikus 1981) class-A enzyme (Peretz et al. 1993) that reversibly catalyzes the oxidation of secondary alcohols to the corresponding ketones. TbADH is a tetramer comprising four identical Abbreviations: ADH, alcohol dehydrogenase; CbADH, Clostridium beijerinckii alcohol dehydrogenase; TbADH, Thermoanaerobacter brockii alcohol dehydrogenase; EXAFS, extended X-ra...