Abstract
Thiamine pyrophosphate 1 is an essential cofactor in all living systems1. Its biosynthesis involves the separate syntheses of the pyrimidine 2 and thiazole 3 precursors, which are then coupled2. Two biosynthetic routes to the thiamine thiazole have been identified. In prokaryotes, five enzymes act on three substrates to produce the thiazole via a complex oxidative condensation reaction, the mechanistic details of which are now well established2,3,4,5,6. In contrast, only one gene product is involved in thiazole biosynthesis in eukaryotes (THI4p in Saccharomyces cerevisiae)7. Here we report the preparation of fully active recombinant wild-type THI4p, the identification of an iron-dependent sulphide transfer reaction from a conserved cysteine residue of the protein to a reaction intermediate and the demonstration that THI4p is a suicide enzyme undergoing only a single turnover.
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Acknowledgements
We thank F. W. McLafferty for initial FTMS analysis of THI4p. This research was funded by NIH grant DK44083 (to T.P.B.), the Robert E. Welch Foundation grant A-0034 (to T.P.B.), DK67081 (to S.E.E.) and NSF grant DBI0821700 (to D.H.R.).
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A.C. performed all biochemical experiments with recombinantly expressed THI4p, N.D.A. performed all biochemical experiments with endogenous THI4p from yeast, S.B. performed structural analyses, P.C.D. supervised FTMS experiments and assisted in FTMS data analyses, and P.-J.P. performed the sequence analysis by mass spectrometry on endogenous THI4p. D.H.R. supervised the mass spectrometric analysis on endogenous THI4p, S.E.E. supervised the structural studies and T.P.B. supervised the biochemical studies.
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Chatterjee, A., Abeydeera, N., Bale, S. et al. Saccharomyces cerevisiae THI4p is a suicide thiamine thiazole synthase. Nature 478, 542–546 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10503
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10503
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