The use of dithionite reduction to identify the essential tyrosine residue in the F1-ATPase from the thermophilic bacterium, PS3, that reacts with 7-chloro-4-nitrobenzofurazan.

When the F1-ATPase from the thermophilic bacterium, PS3, was inactivated by greater than 90% with 7-chloro-4-nitro[14C]benzofurazan ([14C]Nbf-Cl) at pH 7.4, 1.4 mol of [14C]Nbf were incorporated per mol of enzyme. After pepsin digestion of the labeled enzyme at pH 3.0, a single, major peak of radioactivity was resolved by reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography under acidic conditions were peptidyl Nbf-O-tyrosine is stable. This radioactive peak, designated RP-1, eluted with a retention time of 95 min. When the material in RP-1 was subjected to reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography under the same conditions after treatment with sodium dithionite, a single, major peak of radioactivity, designated RP-2, was resolved with a retention time of 52 min. Automatic Edman degradation of this material revealed that it has the amino acid sequence I-Y*-V-P-A-D-(D), where Y* presumably represents peptidyl [14C]Nbf-O-tyrosine. These results provide the basis for a facile method to purify peptides containing [14C]Nbf-O-tyrosine in which the labeled residues can be identified by amino acid sequence analysis using the Edman degradation.