Paracatalytic inactivation of L-2-haloacid dehalogenase from Pseudomonas sp. YL by hydroxylamine. Evidence for the formation of an ester intermediate.

Asp10 of L-2-haloacid dehalogenase from Pseudomonas sp. YL was proposed to act as a nucleophile to attack the alpha-carbon of L-2-haloalkanoic acids to form an ester intermediate, which is hydrolyzed by nucleophilic attack of a water molecule on the carbonyl carbon (Liu, J.-Q, Kurihara, T., Miyagi, M., Esaki, N., and Soda, K. (1995) J. Biol. Chem. 270, 18309-18312). We have found that the enzyme is paracatalytically inactivated by hydroxylamine in the presence of the substrates monochloroacetate and L-2-chloropropionate. Ion spray mass spectrometry demonstrated that the molecular mass of the enzyme inactivated by hydroxylamine during the dechlorination of monochloroacetate is about 74 Da greater than that of the native enzyme. To determine the increase of the molecular mass more precisely, we digested the inactivated enzyme with lysyl endopeptidase and measured the molecular masses of the peptide fragments. The molecular mass of the hexapeptide Gly6-Lys11 was shown to increase by 73 Da. Tandem mass spectrometric analysis of this peptide revealed that the increase is due to a modification of Asp10. When the enzyme was paracatalytically inactivated by hydroxylamine during the dechlorination of L-2-chloropropionate, the molecular mass of the hexapeptide was 87 Da higher. Hydroxylamine is proposed to attack the carbonyl carbon of the ester intermediate and form a stable aspartate beta-hydroxamate carboxyalkyl ester residue in the inactivated enzyme.