Molecular symmetry and metastable states of enzymes exhibiting half-of-the-sites reactivity.

Half-of-the-sites reactivity in oligomeric enzymes has generally been accepted as evidence for structural asymmetry between subunits. However, we show that the symmetric two-state allosteric model [Monod, J., Wyman, J., & Changeux, J.-P. (1965) J. Mol. Biol. 12, 88-118] is quantitatively consistent with half-of-the-sites reactivity data for several hexameric and tetrameric enzymes. Specifically, the time courses for both the modification and the inactivation of glutamate dehydrogenase by glutamyl alpha-chloromethyl ketone and uridine diphosphoglucose dehydrogenase by 5-(iodoacetamidoethyl)aminonaphthalene-1-sulfonic acid are fit with just five parameters for each enzyme-modifier pair. In the case of glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase, the time courses for modification of the yeast enzyme by iodoacetic acid and the rabbit-muscle enzyme by 3,3,3-trifluorobromoacetone are fit with the same model, and parameter values from these fits are used to generate theoretical inactivation curves which are found to agree well with the experimentally measured inactivation. We conclude that half-of-the-sites reactivity, if it is not an artifact of residual heterogeneity, could be a kinetic phenomenon related to metastability of partially modified states of a symmetric oligomer and that asymmetry between subunits should therefore not necessarily be inferred from such behavior. If similar metastability occurs in substrate binding, it may play a significant role in mechanism of catalysis and control. In such cases, the virtual inaccessibility of the substrate binding equilibrium would preclude conventional quasi-equilibrium models for the enzyme kinetics.