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Publication Abstract from PubMed

The Lon AAA+ protease degrades damaged or misfolded proteins in its intramolecular chamber. Its activity must be precisely controlled, but the mechanism by which Lon is regulated in response to different environments is not known. Facultative anaerobes in the Enterobacteriaceae family, mostly symbionts and pathogens, encounter both anaerobic and aerobic environments inside and outside the host's body, respectively. The bacteria characteristically have two cysteine residues on the Lon protease (P) domain surface that unusually form a disulfide bond. Here we show that the cysteine residues act as a redox switch of Lon. Upon disulfide bond reduction, the exit pore of the P-domain ring narrows by approximately 30%, thus interrupting product passage and decreasing activity by 80%; disulfide bonding by oxidation restores the pore size and activity. The redox switch (E degrees ' = -227 mV) is appropriately tuned to respond to variation between anaerobic and aerobic conditions, thus optimizing the cellular proteolysis level for each environment.

A redox switch shapes the Lon protease exit pore to facultatively regulate proteolysis.,Nishii W, Kukimoto-Niino M, Terada T, Shirouzu M, Muramatsu T, Kojima M, Kihara H, Yokoyama S Nat Chem Biol. 2015 Jan;11(1):46-51. doi: 10.1038/nchembio.1688. Epub 2014 Nov, 10. PMID:25383757^[1]

From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.