The covalent structure of bovine liver rhodanese. Isolation and partial structural analysis of cyanogen bromide fragements and the complete sequence of the enzyme.

Cyanogen bromide fragments from reduced and carboxymethylated rhodanese have been isolated by gel filtration and ion exchange chromatography on columns of Sephadex G-50 and sulfoethyl-Sephadex C-25, respectively. Partial or complete structural analysis of these fragments has permitted the ordering in sequence of all eleven of the nonaligned tryptic peptides from citraconylated, S-carboxymethylcysteinyl-rhodanese and has thus provided the complete covalent structure of the enzyme. Rhodanese is a single polypeptide of 293 residues and the molecule weight calculated from the covalent structural analysis is about 32,900. The cysteinyl residue implicated in the catalytic function of rhodanese is at position 247. In some preparations of the enzyme the NH2-terminal dipeptide Val-His is missing and the sequence begins with the glutamine at position 3. The rhodanese thus obtained contains 291 amino acid residues and possesses full enzymic activity. X-ray crystallographic analysis of rhodanese has shown that the halves of the molecule (Domains I and II) are nearly identical in conformation. Comparative analysis of the sequences in Domains I and II containing residues with conformationally equivalent alpha C atoms has revealed some degree of homology between the halves of the rhodanese polypeptide. Nethertheless, the structural equivalence of the rhodanese domains is reflected much more by their similarity in tertiary structural than by their sequence homology, even when the sequence comparisons are optimized with reference to the crystallographic results.