Ligand interactions of diphtheria toxin. III. Direct photochemical cross-linking of ATP and NAD to toxin.

The locations of ATP- and NAD-binding sites on diphtheria toxin were investigated by ultraviolet irradiation of ligand . toxin complexes. Illumination of ATP with ultraviolet light (253.7 nm) in the presence of various proteins resulted in photoinduced cross-linking only with Fraction II of diphtheria toxin. Under the same conditions, NAD was cross-linked most effectively to Fragment A, followed by Fraction II and CRM 45. For both ATP and NAD, the degree of protein labelling correlated well with binding data, suggesting that photoinduced cross-linking ocurred only at the high affinity binding sites for these ligands. Nonspecific labeling of unrelated proteins was consistently less than 5% of that observed for Fraction II. Analysis of nicked and reduced Fraction II . ligand complexes on SDS polyacrylamide gels demonstrated that essentially all of the cross-linked label migrated with the A fragment, whether photolysis was performed with ATP or NAD.