Structural and physico-chemical characteristics of Bordetella pertussis adenylate kinase, a tryptophan-containing enzyme.

The adk gene from the Gram-negative pathogen Bordetella pertussis was cloned by complementing the thermosensitive Escherichia coli adk strain CR341T28. B. pertussis adenylate kinase is a 218-amino-acid protein that has high similarity with adenylate kinase from Escherichia coli and Hemophilus influenzae (57%). A distinct characteristic of enzyme from B. pertussis, not found in other bacterial adenylate kinases, is the presence of a tryptophan residue at position 185. Although distant from the catalytic site, this single tryptophan serves as a convenient probe for monitoring the binding of nucleotide substrates or analogs to the enzyme. Differential scanning calorimetry and equilibrium unfolding experiments in guanidine.HCl indicate similar stabilities for adenylate kinase from B. pertussis and E. coli. An extensive comparison between physico-chemical properties of adenylate kinase from B. pertussis and the enzyme from E. coli showed that the kinetic and structural properties of the two enzymes are very similar. However, infrared spectroscopy has allowed to identify small but significant differences in the secondary structure of the two proteins.