A revised kinetic model demonstrates that NO acts as both a ligand and a catalyst in activating soluble guanylate cyclase, challenging previous simple two-step models.
Soluble guanylate cyclase (sGC) is a ferrous iron hemoprotein receptor for nitric oxide (NO). NO binding to the heme activates the enzyme 300-fold. sGC as isolated is five-coordinate, ferrous with histidine as the axial ligand. The NO-activated enzyme is a five-coordinate nitrosyl complex where the axial histidine bond is broken. Past studies using rapid-reaction kinetics demonstrated that both the formation of a six-coordinate intermediate and the conversion of the intermediate to the activated five-coordinate nitrosyl complex depended on the concentration of NO. A model invoking a second NO molecule as a catalyst for the conversion of the six-coordinate intermediate to the five-coordinate sGC-NO complex was proposed to explain the observed kinetic data. A recent study Bellamy, T. C., Wood, J. & Garthwaite, J. (2002) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 99, 507-510 concluded that a simple two-step binding model explains the results. Here we show through further analysis and simulations of previous data that the simple two-step binding model cannot be used to describe our results. Instead we show that a slightly more complex two-step binding model, where NO is used as a ligand in the first step and a catalyst in the second step, can describe our results quite satisfactorily. These new simulations combined with the previous activation data lead to the conclusion that the intermediate six-coordinate sGC-NO complex has substantial activity. The model derived from our simulations also can account for the slow deactivation of sGC that has been observed in vitro.
Ballou et al. (Tue,) studied this question.