JBC, Vol. 252, Issue 5, 1527-1538, Mar, 1977
Transient kinetic studies on the allosteric transition of phosphoglycerate dehydrogenase
R. Dubrow and L. I. Pizer
Stopped flow spectrophotometry was used to investigate the kinetics of the
transition of the phosphoglycerate dehydrogenase (3-phosphoglycerate: NAD
oxidoreductase, EC 1.1.1.95) reaction from the active to the inhibited rate
upon the addition of the physiological inhibitor serine. The transition was
characterized by a single first order rate constant (kobs,i) which was
independent of enzyme concentration. At pH 8.5, kobs,i increased in a
hyperbolic manner with serine concentration from 2 to 8 s-1. The increase
in kobs,i occurred at serine concentrations where the steady state
inhibition was virtually complete. These results indicate that serine
inhibition is an allosteric process involving a conformational change in
the enzyme. A model is presented in which serine at low concentrations
binds exclusively to the inhibited state of the enzyme and shifts the
equilibrium toward that state; at high serine concentrations, serine binds
to the active state, facilitating its conversion to the inhibited state. An
alternative model, which we favor, proposes two classes of inhibitor
binding sites. The kinetics of the fluorescence quenching of enzyme-bound
NADH by serine (Sugimoto, E., and Pizer, L.I. (1968) J. Biol. Chem. 243,
2090-2098), measured by stopped flow fluorimetry, was also characterized by
a single first order rate constant (kobs,f.q.) which was independent of
enzyme concentration. At pH 8.5, kobs,f.q. ranged from 0.4 s-1 at low
serine concentrations to 1.1 s-1 at high serine concentrations. These
results indicate that the fluorescence quenching induced by serine is a
manifestation of a structural change in the enzyme. Enzyme and excess NADH
were mixed with substrate and serine in the stopped flow instrument, and
enzyme-bound NADH fluorescence was monitored by exciting through the
protein at 285 nm. A rapid fluorescence quenching process, which occurred
within the mixing time, was followed by a slower fluorescence enhancement
process which terminated in a steady state level corresponding to the
quenched fluorescence of the enzyme NADH serine complex. The rapid
quenching was the result of substrate binding (Dubrow, R., and Pizer, L.I.
(1977) J. Biol. Chem. 252, 1539-1551). The fluorescence enhancement was
characterized by a single first order rate constant whose value for a given
serine concentration corresponded with Kobs,j. This data shows that the
quenched state of the enzyme-NADH-complex is the state which is directly
responsible for the inhibition of enzyme activity. During catalysis the
quenched state is achieved from a different initial conformation, and
consequently at a different rate, than in the absence of substrate. kobs,j
and kobs,f.q. were also measured using glycine, another inhibitor. The
ultraviolet difference spectrum between enzyme and enzyme plus serine was
determined and proposed to be the result of the same structural change
which is responsible for the fluorescence quenching by serine.