Competitive Inhibitors of Klebsiella aerogenes Urease

We examined several compounds for their mechanisms of inhibition with the nickel-containing active site of homogeneous Klebsiella aerogenes urease. Thiolate anions competitively inhibit urease and directly interact with the metallocenter, as shown by the pH dependence of inhibition and by UV-visible absorbance spectroscopic studies. Cysteamine, which possesses a cationic beta-amino group, exhibited a high affinity for urease (Ki = 5 microM), whereas thiolates containing anionic carboxyl groups were uniformly poor inhibitors. Phosphate monoanion competitively inhibits a protonated form of urease with a pKa of less than 5. Both the thiolate and phosphate inhibition results are consistent with charge repulsion by an anionic group in the urease active site. Acetohydroxamic acid (AHA) was shown to be a slow-binding competitive inhibitor of urease. This compound forms an initial E.AHA complex which then undergoes a slow transformation to yield an E.AHA* complex; the overall dissociation constant of AHA is 2.6 microM. Phenylphosphorodiamidate, also shown to be a slow-binding competitive inhibitor, possesses an overall dissociation constant of 94 pM. The tight binding of phenylphosphorodiamidate was exploited to demonstrate the presence of two active sites per enzyme molecule. Urease contains 4 mol of nickel/mol enzyme, hence there are two nickel ions/catalytic unit. Each of the two slow-binding inhibitors are proposed to form complexes in which the inhibitor bridges the two active site nickel ions. The inhibition results obtained for K. aerogenes urease are compared with inhibition studies of other ureases and are interpreted in terms of a model for catalysis proposed for the jack bean enzyme (Dixon, N.E., Riddles, P.W., Gazzola, C., Blakely, R.L., and Zerner, B. (1980) Can. J. Biochem. 58, 1335-1344).