Superoxide-dependent Oxidation of Melatonin by Myeloperoxidase

Abstract

Myeloperoxidase uses hydrogen peroxide to oxidize numerous substrates to hypohalous acids or reactive free radicals. Here we show that neutrophils oxidize melatonin to N 1 -acetyl-N 2 -formyl-5-methoxykynuramine (AFMK) in a reaction that is catalyzed by myeloperoxidase. Production of AFMK was highly dependent on superoxide but not hydrogen peroxide. It did not require hypochlorous acid, singlet oxygen, or hydroxyl radical. Purified myeloperoxidase and a superoxide-generating system oxidized melatonin to AFMK and a dimer. The dimer would result from coupling of melatonin radicals. Oxidation of melatonin was partially inhibited by catalase or superoxide dismutase. Formation of AFMK was almost completely eliminated by superoxide dismutase but weakly inhibited by catalase. In contrast, production of melatonin dimer was enhanced by superoxide dismutase and blocked by catalase. We propose that myeloperoxidase uses superoxide to oxidize melatonin by two distinct pathways. One pathway involves the classical peroxidation mechanism in which hydrogen peroxide is used to oxidize melatonin to radicals. Superoxide adds to these radicals to form an unstable peroxide that decays to AFMK. In the other pathway, myeloperoxidase uses superoxide to insert dioxygen into melatonin to form AFMK. This novel activity expands the types of oxidative reactions myeloperoxidase can catalyze. It should be relevant to the way neutrophils use superoxide to kill bacteria and how they metabolize xenobiotics.Catalysis of hypochlorous acid production is the accepted physiological function of myeloperoxidase (MPO) 2 (1, 2). This heme enzyme is the major protein in neutrophils and is also present in monocytes, macrophages, microglia (3), and neurons (4, 5). It reacts with hydrogen peroxide to form the redox intermediate compound I, which oxidizes chloride to hypochlorous acid with coincident regeneration of the native enzyme (Reactions 1 and 2). HOCl indicates hypochlorous acid.Myeloperoxidase also promotes the oxidation of numerous substrates (RH) to free radical intermediates via the classical peroxidase cycle involving compound I and compound II (Reactions 3 and 4).Klebanoff (6) was the first to show that myeloperoxidase has potent antimicrobial activity because of its ability to generate hypochlorous acid. He proposed that myeloperoxidase produces hypochlorous acid inside phagosomes where it reacts with and kills ingested bacteria. However, during microbial killing myeloperoxidase functions in the presence of a high flux of superoxide (7). Superoxide reacts rapidly with native enzyme to produce oxymyeloperoxidase or compound III (Reaction 5; k 5 ϭ 2 ϫ 10 6 M Ϫ1 s Ϫ1 (8)), which is the dominant form of myeloperoxidase in stimulated neutrophils (9). Reactions of superoxide with myeloperoxidase are likely to be important in host defense because it has been demonstrated that superoxide enhances myeloperoxidasedependent killing of Staphylococcus aureus by isolated human neutrophils (10). The nature of this interaction has yet to be revealed.Compound II...

Antioxidants restore aortic ring relaxation in pancreatectomized rats

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Optical probes for detection and quantification of neutrophils’ oxidative burst. A review

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Melatonin Metabolism in the Central Nervous System

“…It remains to be studied whether microglia responds in a similar way to melatonin and AFMK. Activated microglia could convert melatonin by two enzymes, indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase, although its main substrate is tryptophan, not melatonin [50,51,122,132], and myeloperoxidase [27,50,111,123,157,158]. Additionally, melatonin might be oxidized to AFMK by reactive oxygen species [38,39,47,50,136,141] transiently formed in excess.…”