Quaternary structure and interaction approaches to allosteric regulation of class I ribonucleotide reductases

Sammanfattning: Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) chains in which our genetic blueprint is stored are built from four DNA precursors by DNA polymerases. The enzyme ribonucleotide reductase (RNR) provides the only de novo synthesis pathway of deoxyribonucleotides from ribonucleotides and is essential for nearly all organisms. All four ribonucleotides are substrates for RNR and key to this flexibility is a sophisticated allosteric regulation. Nucleotide effectors (ATP, dATP, dTTP or dGTP) binding to the allosteric specificity site determines substrate specificity for the active site. When present at high concentrations, dATP binds to the allosteric overall activity site and inhibits activity by an unknown mechanism. Three approaches, RNR activity measurements, subunit interaction studies and quaternary structure studies were applied to four different class I RNRs to address the allosteric overall regulation. We found that allosteric overall inhibition was closely linked to formation of tight and large RNR protein complexes; α4β4 complex for the Escherichia coli class Ia RNR and α6β2 for the Dictyostelium discoideum class Ia RNR with functional allosteric inhibitions. The Aeh1 phage class Ia RNR with a non-functional dATP inhibition showed weak remnant inhibition features, while the Bacillus anthracis class Ib RNR without the allosteric overall regulation domain lacked these features. In addition, we presented the first biochemical characterization of a mechanism to restore protein function after gene fragmentation, we showed that the B. anthracis class Ib RNR was most active when reconstituted with manganese and in the presence of a physiological redoxin protein and we found that the class Ia RNR is the principal RNR in D. discoideum, although the coexisting class II RNR could partly compensate class I RNR inhibition during axenic growth. Finally, our improved method for studying RNR interactions has potential for RNR inhibitor screening.