Isoleucyl-tRNA synthetase from baker's yeast. Influence of substrate concentrations on aminoacylation pathways, discrimination between tRNAIle and tRNAVal, and between isoleucine and valine.

The influence of substrate concentrations on aminoacylation pathways and substrate specificities was investigated in the acylation reaction catalyzed by isoleucyl-tRNA synthetase from yeast. For the cognate substrates isoleucine and tRNAIle two Km values each differing by a factor about five were determined; the higher values were observed at concentrations higher than 1 microM, the lower values below 1 microM isoleucine or tRNAIle, respectively. At substrate concentrations below 1 microM also kcat values of the isoleucylation reaction are lowered. With the noncognate substrates valine and tRNAVal such differences could not be detected. The substrate ATP did not show any change of its Km value as far as the reaction was measurable. Under six different new assay conditions orders of substrate addition and product release followed sixtimes a sequential ordered ter-ter steady-state mechanism with ATP as the first substrate to be added, isoleucine as the second, and tRNAIle as the third one; pyrophosphate is the first product to be released, isoleucyl-tRNA the second, and AMP the third one. In one case this mechanism was modified by a rapid equilibrium segment for addition of ATP and isoleucine. From kcat and Km values and from AMP formation rates discrimination factors for discrimination between tRNAIleII and tRNAValI as well as between isoleucine and valine were determined. In the first case discrimination factors can vary up to a factor of thirty by changes of tRNA or amino-acid concentrations, in the second case discrimination factors are practically invariant. The two different Km values are hypothetically explained by assumption of anticooperativity in a flip-flop mechanism. Two hypothetical catalytic cycles are postulated.