Essential Lysine Residues in the N-Terminal and the C-Terminal Domain of Human Adenylate Kinase Interact with Adenine Nucleotides As Found by Site-Directed Random Mutagenesis†,¶,#

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

To elucidate the minimum requirement of amino acid residues for the active center in human adenylate kinase (hAK1), we carried out random site-directed mutagenesis of key lysine residues (K9, K21, K27, K31, K63, K131, and K194), which were conserved in mammalian AK1 species, with the pMEX8-hAK1 plasmid [Ayabe, T., et al. (1996) Biochem. Mol. Biol. Int. 38, 373-381]. Twenty different mutants were obtained and analyzed by steady-state kinetics, and all mutants showed activity loss by Km and/or k(cat) effects on MgATP2-, AMP2-, or both. The results have led to the following conclusions. (1) Lys9 would appear to interact with both MgATP2- and AMP2- but to a larger extent than with AMP2-. (2) Lys21 is likely to play a role in substrate binding of both MgATP2- and AMP2- but more strongly affects MgATP2-. (3) Lys27 and Lys131 would appear to play a functional role in catalysis by interacting strongly with MgATP2-. (4) Lys31 would appear to interact with MgATP2- and AMP2- at the MgATP2- site. (5) Lys63 would be more likely to interact with MgATP2- than with AMP2-. (6) Lys194 in the flanking C-terminal domain would appear to interact not only with MgATP2- but also with AMP2- at the MgATP2- site by stabilizing substrate binding. The loss of the positively charged epsilon-amino group of lysine affects both the affinity for the substrate and the catalytic efficiency. Hence, hydrophilic lysine residues in hAK1 would appear to be essential for substrate-enzyme interaction with the coordination of some arginine residues, reported previously [Kim, H. J., et al. (1990) Biochemistry 29, 1107-1111].