A combination of hydrogen/deuterium exchange, fluorescence quenching, and kinetic studieswas used to acquire experimental evidence for the crystallographically hypothesized increase in localflexibility which occurs in thermophilic NAD
+-dependent
Sulfolobus solfataricus alcohol dehydrogenase(SsADH) upon substitution Asn249Tyr. The substitution, located at the adenine-binding site, proved todecrease the affinity for both coenzyme and substrate, rendering the mutant enzyme 6-fold more activewhen compared to the wild-type enzyme [Esposito et al. (2003)
FEBS Lett. 539, 14-18]. The amide H/Dexchange data show that the wild-type and mutant enzymes have similar global flexibility at 22 and 60
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C. However, the temperature dependence of the Stern-Volmer constant determined by acrylamidequenching shows that the increase in temperature affects the local flexibility differently, since the
KSVincrement is significantly higher for the wild-type than for the mutant enzyme over the range 18-45
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C.Interestingly, the corresponding van't Hoff plot (log
KSV vs 1/
T) proves nonlinear for the apo and holowild-type and apo mutant enzymes, with a break at
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45
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C in all three cases due to a conformationalchange affecting the tryptophan microenvironment experienced by the quencher molecules. The Arrheniusand van't Hoff plots derived from the
kcat and
KM thermodependence measured with cyclohexanol andNAD
+ at different temperatures display an abrupt change of slope at 45-50
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C. This proves morepronounced in the case of the mutant enzyme compared to the wild-type enzyme due to a conformationalchange in the structure rather than to an overlapping of two or more rate-limiting reaction steps withdifferent temperature dependencies of their rate constants. Three-dimensional analysis indicates that theobserved conformational change induced by temperature is associated with the flexible loops directlyinvolved in the substrate and coenzyme binding.