Document Type

Article

Publication Date

5-2014

Publication Title

PLOS One

Volume

9

Issue

5

Pages

1-11

Publisher Name

PLOS

Abstract

The emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains underscores the importance of identifying new drug targets and developing new antimicrobial compounds. Lysine and meso-diaminopimelic acid are essential for protein production and bacterial peptidoglycan cell wall remodeling and are synthesized in bacteria by enzymes encoded within dap operon. Thereforedap enzymes may serve as excellent targets for developing a new class of antimicrobial agents. The dapE-encoded N-succinyl-L,L-diaminopimelic acid desuccinylase (DapE) convertsN-succinyl-L,L-diaminopimelic acid to L,L-diaminopimelic acid and succinate. The enzyme is composed of catalytic and dimerization domains, and belongs to the M20 peptidase family. To understand the specific role of each domain of the enzyme we engineered dimerization domain deletion mutants of DapEs from Haemophilus influenzae and Vibrio cholerae, and characterized these proteins structurally and biochemically. No activity was observed for all deletion mutants. Structural comparisons of wild-type, inactive monomeric DapE enzymes with other M20 peptidases suggest that the dimerization domain is essential for DapE enzymatic activity. Structural analysis and molecular dynamics simulations indicate that removal of the dimerization domain increased the flexibility of a conserved active site loop that may provide critical interactions with the substrate.

Comments

Author Posting. © 2014 Nocek et al. This article is posted here by permission of the authors for personal use, not for redistribution. The article was published in PLOS One, May 2014, http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0093593

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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