bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/641969; this version posted May 19, 2019. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. 1 Simple rules govern the diversity of bacterial nicotianamine-like metallophores 2 Clémentine Laffont1, Catherine Brutesco1, Christine Hajjar1, Gregorio Cullia2, Roberto Fanelli2, 3 Laurent Ouerdane3, Florine Cavelier2, Pascal Arnoux1,* 4 1Aix Marseille Univ, CEA, CNRS, BIAM, Saint Paul-Lez-Durance, France F-13108. 5 2Institut des Biomolécules Max Mousseron, IBMM, UMR-5247, CNRS, Université Montpellier, 6 ENSCM , Place Eugène Bataillon, 34095 Montpellier cedex 5, France. 7 3CNRS-UPPA, Laboratoire de Chimie Analytique Bio-inorganique et Environnement, UMR 5254, 8 Hélioparc, 2, Av. Angot 64053 Pau, France. 9 *Correspondance: Pascal Arnoux, Aix Marseille Univ, CEA, CNRS, BIAM, Saint Paul-Lez- 10 Durance, France F-13108;
[email protected]; Tel. 04-42-25-35-70 11 Keywords: opine/opaline dehydrogenase, CntM, nicotianamine-like metallophore, bacillopaline 12 13 ABSTRACT 14 In metal-scarce environments, some pathogenic bacteria produce opine-type metallophores 15 mainly to face the host’s nutritional immunity. This is the case of staphylopine, pseudopaline and 16 yersinopine, identified in Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Yersinia pestis 17 respectively. These metallophores are synthesized by two (CntLM) or three enzymes (CntKLM), 18 CntM catalyzing the last step of biosynthesis using diverse substrates (pyruvate or α-ketoglutarate), 19 pathway intermediates (xNA or yNA) and cofactors (NADH or NADPH), depending on the species. 20 Here, we explored substrate specificity of CntM by combining bioinformatics and structural analysis 21 with chemical synthesis and enzymatic studies.