Increased Stability and Catalytic Efficiency of Yeast Hexokinase Upon Interaction with Zwitterionic Micelles. Kinetics and Conformational Studies

The effect of ligands (glucose, ATP and Mg2+) and zwitterionic micelles of lysophosphatidylcholine (LPC) or N-hexadecyl-N,N-dimethyl-3-ammonium propanesulfonate (HPS) in the yeast hexokinase (HK) stability was studied at 35 degrees C. The thermal inactivation kinetics followed one-exponential decay. The effect of ligands on protecting the enzyme against inactivation followed the order: glucose > glucose/Mg2+ >ATP/Mg2+ approximately or approximately equal to Mg2+l approximately or approximately equal to buffer only. Both LPC and HPS micelles increased the enzyme stability only when the incubation medium contained glucose or glucose/Mg2+, suggesting that the protein conformation is a key prerequisite for the enzyme-micelle interaction to take place. This enzyme-micelle interaction resulted in an increased catalytic efficiency (with a decrease in Km for ATP and increase in Vmax as well as in changes on the tertiary (intrinsic fluorescence) structure of the yeast hexokinase.