Thioredoxin reductase from Plasmodium falciparum: evidence for interaction between the C-terminal cysteine residues and the active site disulfide-dithiol.

Thioredoxin reductase (TrxR) catalyzes the reduction of thioredoxin by NADPH. TrxR from Plasmodium falciparum (PfTrxR) is a homodimer with a subunit Mr of 59 000. Each monomer contains one FAD and one redox active disulfide. Despite the high degress of similarity between PfTrxR and the human TrxR, their primary structures present a striking difference in the C-terminus. PfTrxR has two cysteine residues near the C-terminal Gly, while the human TrxR contains a Cys-SeCys dipeptide penultimate to the C-terminal Gly. It has been proposed that the C-terminal cysteines (as a cystine) of PfTrxR are involved in catalysis by an intramolecular dithiol-disulfide interchange with the nascent redox active dithiol. To investigate the proposed function of the C-terminal cysteines of PfTrxR, each has been changed to an alanine [Gilberger, T.-M., Bergmann, B., Walter, R. D., and Müller, S. (1998) FEBS Lett. 425, 407-410]. The single C-terminal cysteine remaining in each mutant was modified with 5,5'-dithiobis(2-nitrobenzoic acid) to form mixed disulfides consisting of the enzyme thiol and thionitrobenzoate (TNB). In reductive titrations of these mixed disulfide enzymes, 1 equiv of TNB anion was released upon reduction of the enzyme itself, while control experiments in which mutants without C-terminal cysteine were used showed little TNB anion release. This suggests that each of the C-terminal cysteines as a TNB mixed disulfide does mimic the proposed electron acceptor in the C-terminus. Analysis of the rapid reaction kinetics showed that the C-terminal mixed disulfide of the modified enzyme is reduced at a rate which is comparable with the turnover number of the wild type enzyme.