Quenching of tryptophanyl fluorescence of bovine adrenal P-450C-21 and inhibition of substrate binding by acrylamide.

Quenching of the tryptophanyl fluorescence of cytochrome P-450C-21 by acrylamide and its relationship to substrate binding are investigated by using steady-state and time-resolved data. The average collisional quenching constant was 0.4 M whereas the quenching constant for the total fluorescence was 10.8 +/- 0.9 M. This indicates that the quenching is essentially static. The quencher inhibited the binding of the substrate apparently competitively. The inhibition constant was 0.092 M, giving rise to an association constant of 10.9 M which is remarkably similar to the static quenching constant. It is suggested that tryptophan(s) may represent a key to the substrate-binding site in P-450C-21.