The demonstration of a glutamate dehydrogenase-NADP-L-glutamate charge-transfer complex and its location on the reaction pathway.

In previous transient state kinetic work from this laboratory, we proposed a new mechanism for the glutamate dehydrogenase-catalyzed oxidative deamination reaction involving an initial replacement of a proton from lysine 126 by a single bound water molecule, followed by closure of the active site cleft and expulsion of bulk water, providing a hydrophobic environment for the ensuing hydride transfer step. Here, we report the results of further transient state fluorescence, absorbance, and kinetic isotope effect studies, which demonstrate the occurrence of an unusual intermediate in the early steps of that reaction. This phenomenon is revealed by an initial fluorescence burst that occurs in the time period where the absorbance signal is still in its lag phase. Using an extension of the proton/product ratio approach we have described earlier, we show that this intermediate is a strongly fluorescent but weakly absorbing species whose absorption maximum is red-shifted beyond that of other known complexes of this enzyme. The transient state kinetic isotope effects of the fluorescence and absorbance signals are compatible only with a reaction scheme in which the formation of the fluorescent complex precedes the hydride transfer step. The optical properties of this enzyme-oxidized coenzyme-substrate intermediate strongly suggest that it is a charge-transfer complex, similar in nature to the complex responsible for the well known "Racker band" reported in 1952 for glyceraldehyde-3-phosphatase dehydrogenase (Racker, E., and Krimsky, I. (1952) Nature 169, 1043-1044). The crystal structure studies of the enzyme-coenzyme and enzyme-L-glutamate complexes of the closely analogous Clostridium symbosium glutamate dehydrogenase, reported by the Sheffield group (Stillman, T. J., Baker, P. J., Britton, K. L., and Rice, D. W. (1993) J. Mol. Biol. 234, 1131-1139), provide a basis for a physical explanation of the phenomenon. We conclude that the charge transfer phenomenon is caused by the near apposition of the unprotonated alpha-amino group of the substrate in a form of the enzyme in which a conformational change has caused the complete closing of the active site cleft.