Primary Citation of Related Structures:   4OV4, 4OV9
PubMed Abstract: 
The committed step of leucine biosynthesis, converting acetyl-CoA and α-ketoisovalerate into α-isopropylmalate, is catalyzed by α-isopropylmalate synthase (IPMS), an allosteric enzyme subjected to feedback inhibition by the end product L-leucine. We characterized the short form IPMS from Leptospira biflexa (LbIPMS2), which exhibits a catalytic activity comparable with that of the long form IPMS (LbIPMS1) and has a similar N-terminal domain followed by subdomain I and subdomain II but lacks the whole C-terminal regulatory domain ...
The committed step of leucine biosynthesis, converting acetyl-CoA and α-ketoisovalerate into α-isopropylmalate, is catalyzed by α-isopropylmalate synthase (IPMS), an allosteric enzyme subjected to feedback inhibition by the end product L-leucine. We characterized the short form IPMS from Leptospira biflexa (LbIPMS2), which exhibits a catalytic activity comparable with that of the long form IPMS (LbIPMS1) and has a similar N-terminal domain followed by subdomain I and subdomain II but lacks the whole C-terminal regulatory domain. We found that partial deletion of the regulatory domain of LbIPMS1 resulted in a loss of about 50% of the catalytic activity; however, when the regulatory domain was deleted up to Arg-385, producing a protein that is almost equivalent to the intact LbIPMS2, about 90% of the activity was maintained. Moreover, in LbIPMS2 or LbIPMS1, further deletion of several residues from the C terminus of subdomain II significantly impaired or completely abolished the catalytic activity, respectively. These results define a complete and independently functional catalytic module of IPMS consisting of both the N-terminal domain and the two subdomains. Structural comparison of LbIPMS2 and the Mycobacterium tuberculosis IPMS revealed two different conformations of subdomain II that likely represent two substrate-binding states related to cooperative catalysis. The biochemical and structural analyses together with the previously published hydrogen-deuterium exchange data led us to propose a conformation transition mechanism for feedback inhibition mediated by subdomains I and II that might associated with alteration of the binding affinity toward acetyl-CoA.
Organizational Affiliation: 
From the Chinese Academy of Sciences Key Laboratory of Synthetic Biology and Key Laboratory of Medical Molecular Virology affiliated to the Ministries of Education and Health, Shanghai Medical College, and Department of Microbiology and Microbial Engineering, School of Life Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China, Shanghai-Ministry of Science and Technology Key Laboratory for Health and Disease Genomics, Chinese National Human Genome Center, Shanghai 201203, China, Department of Microbiology and Li Ka Shing Institute of Health Sciences, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Prince of Wales Hospital, Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region 999077, China, and gpzhao@sibs.ac.cn.