Arginine modification in elastase. Effect on catalytic activity and conformation of the calcium-binding site.

Chemical modification of 2 +/- 0.5 arginine residues of porcine pancreatic elastase by 1,2-cyclohexanedione leads to an 85 +/- 5% loss of activity with the specific substrate N-succinyltrialanine p-nitroanilide. Modification of additional arginines does not completely abolish the enzyme activity. The modification reaction is very fast (second order rate constant = 0.24 M-1 S-1) and involves only arginine residues. Acetyltetraalanine or trifluoroacetyltetraalanine decreases the rate of cyclohexanedione-induced inactivation of the enzyme but does not significantly change the number of modified arginine residues. Other dicarbonyl reagents, butanedione or phenylglyoxal, also react with elastase but at much lower rates. Cyclohexanedione-modified elastase is partially active against a series of synthetic substrates of varying chain length. The partial inhibition results from a 2- to 5-fold increase in Km while kappa cat is increased for most substrates. For N-succinyltrialanine p-nitroanilide both the acylation and deacylation rate constants are decreased. The Ki values of a series of acetylated and trifluoroacetylated inhibitors increase 2- to 5-fold. Modified elastase is still able to react with fibrous elastin and with plasma alpha 1-proteinase inhibitor but at significantly lower rates. Modification of one arginine residue alters the properties of the calcium-binding site of elastase as demonstrated by terbium luminescence experiments. The affinity of enzyme for terbium is decreased by a factor of 10 and the circularly polarized luminescence spectrum of the terbium-elastase complex is considerably flattened. Modification of further arginine residues does not increase the extent of these alterations. Circular dichroism shows that the overall conformation of elastase is not altered following arginine modification. We speculate that the two residues modified by cyclohexanedione are Arg 65, located at about 8 A from the metal ion-binding site, and Arg 217A, located at the S'3 subsite of elastase.