Studies on Selected Enzymes Involved in Ubiquinone Biosynthesis in Escherichia Coli

Studies on Selected Enzymes Involved in Ubiquinone Biosynthesis in Escherichia Coli
Author: Debarati Ghose
Publisher:
Total Pages: 113
Release: 2018
Genre: Microbiology
ISBN: 9780438391796

Escherichia coli synthesize an important component of the electron transport chain, Coenzyme Q (Ubiquinone; Q) from the shikimate pathway intermediate, chorismate. Two isofunctional enzymes UbiD and UbiX are responsible for the decarboxylation step in Q biosynthesis. It was shown by Gulmezian et al. (2007) that the loss of ubiX+ gene leads to a reduction in growth in both rich and minimal media as well as decrease in Q. They further reported that UbiX is responsible for controlling the activity of UbiG O-methyltransferase, involved in two O-methylation reactions in Q biosynthesis. Contrary to these results, in this study we show that the [Delta]ubiX had no effect on the growth of E. coli in succinate minimal medium and on Q biosynthesis. The growth and levels of Q, were however drastically decreased when the gene ubiD+ was deleted. The decreased levels of Q synthesized by [Delta]ubiD is due to the activity of UbiX. It was further shown that UbiX was not involved in controlling the activity of UbiG, since the expression of UbiG was not affected in the [Delta]ubiX deletion mutant. Phylogenetic analysis of the two methyltrasferases, UbiG and UbiE demonstrated the possibility of horizontal gene transfer between closely related bacteria. The first of the three hydroxylations in Q biosynthesis, contrary to previous studies was shown to be carried out by UbiI (VisC) by Chehade et al. (2013). In this study we demonstrate that a [Delta]visC deletion mutant grew to wild-type levels on succinate minimal medium and synthesized wild-type levels of Q, proving that VisC was not involved in the aerobic biosynthesis of Q. Our results show that, [Delta]ubiB deletion mutant failed to grow on succinate minimal medium and accumulated 2-octaprenylphenol, the substrate for this hydroxylation step. It was recently reported that, in Uropathogenic E. coli (UPEC), VisC is required for biofilm formation and expression of Type I pili resulting in increased virulence under aerobic conditions (Floyd et al., 2016). The prenyl sidechain in Q is synthesized in most bacteria using the non-mevalonate or methylerythritol-phosphate (MEP) pathway (Rodriguez-Concepcion and Boronat, 2002), whereas humans and a few genera of bacteria use the mevalonate pathway (Endo, 1992). This difference was utilized in designing novel antimicrobials targeted against the various enzymes of the MEP pathway. Our study involved the anti-bacterial testing of over 350 such compounds against nine potential bacteria including pathogens like Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Bacillus cereus, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Mycobacterium smegmatis. Over 200 compounds were found to have inhibitory effects on multiple bacteria and this will contribute to research for new antibiotics, which is the need of the hour.

Computational Characterization and Understanding of Protein Assemblies

Computational Characterization and Understanding of Protein Assemblies
Author: Romain Launay
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2023
Genre:
ISBN:

Protein-protein interactions (PPIs) and supramolecular assemblies are essential for the functions of living cells. They play an important role in various biological functions, such as signal transduction, cell-cell communication, transcription, replication and membrane transport. Determining and characterizing such interfaces remains a challenge in structural biology. However, advances in the development of computational methods and the power of the computing resources available today have led to a considerable improvement in the accuracy of in silico predictions of three-dimensional models of protein assemblies.In this thesis, the aim was to predict the structure of a supramolecular assembly, called the Ubi metabolon, involved in the ubiquinone (UQ8) biosynthesis pathway in Escherichia coli. Ubiquinone is a prenol with oxido-reducing properties, localized in membranes, and highly conserved throughout evolution but also in different cells of organisms. It is composed of two main parts, an aromatic group with oxido-reducing properties, known as quinone or polar head, and a polyisoprenoid tail which is hydrophobic in nature. In this study, we are interested in the final stages of the biosynthetic pathway, in particular the modifications (methylations and hydroxylations) of the polar head. These reactions take place within the Ubi metabolon. The latter is made up of seven different proteins (UbiE, UbiG, UbiF, UbiH, UbiI, UbiJ, UbiK) catalysing six consecutive enzymatic reactions.In this work, we sought to predict the structure of the metabolon and were thus able to propose a protein subset that we called the 'core subunit'. This sub-unit includes all the partners and could be biologically functional. In parallel, a study was carried out on the UbiJ-UbiK2 heterotrimer, an essential molecular brick of the Ubi metabolon. A three-dimensional model of UbiJ-UbiK2 was proposed. Using a multi-scale modelling study, it was shown that it could be involved in the release of ubiquinone from membranes. Finally, the last part of this work focused on studying the behavior of a particular family of enzymes, the class A flavin mono-oxygenases, to which UbiF, UbiH and UbiI belong. A comparative study between a representative enzyme from this family, called PHBH, and UbiI was carried out, concluding that interactions with partners were necessary to stabilize these proteins within the Ubi metabolon.Taken together, this work and the proposed hypotheses provide a new insight into the supramolecular organization of the Ubi metabolon, both structurally and functionally. Our results open up new prospects for their experimental study.