Conversion of glutamic acid 192 to glutamine in activated protein C changes the substrate specificity and increases reactivity toward macromolecular inhibitors.

Protein C is a vitamin K-dependent serine protease zymogen that upon activation inhibits the coagulation cascade by inactivating factors Va and VIIIa. In an attempt to improve the anticoagulant activity of activated protein C (APC), we have prepared a mutant of protein C in mammalian cells in which Glu at position 192 (chymotrypsin numbering system) has been replaced with Gln (PC E192Q). Our strategy is based on the observation that the same substitution in thrombin improves the catalytic activity toward natural and synthetic substrates that contain Asp residues at P3 and P3'. Since factor Va also has an Asp at position P3 in the APC cleavage site of the factor Va heavy chain, we hypothesized that APC E192Q would inactivate factor Va more rapidly than wild type APC. The mutant inactivated factor Va approximately 2-3-fold faster than wild type. In plasma the mutant exhibited slightly less anticoagulant activity than wild type enzyme. Further characterization revealed that APC E192Q is inhibited 280 times faster than APC by alpha 1-antitrypsin (K2 = 2.8 x 10(3) M-1S-1 versus 10 M-1 S-1), and unlike APC, APC E192Q is inhibited by antithrombin III in the presence of heparin (K2 = 1.17 x 10(3) M-1 S-1) M-1 S-1) and absence of heparin (K2 = 57 M-1 S-1). Ca2+ increased K2 more than 4-fold with or without heparin. Unlike wild type APC, APC E192Q was effectively inhibited by pancreatic trypsin inhibitor (Ki = 10.6 +/- 0.26 nM) and tissue factor pathway inhibitor (58 +/- 5 nM). Like factor Xa, APC E192Q rapidly processed factor IX to factor IX alpha. These observations suggest that even though Glu at position 192 is not an optimal residue for catalyzing factor Va inactivation, it is an evolutionary adaptation to slow inhibition by plasma protease inhibitors.