Biochemical Characterization of Human Guanylate Kinase And
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Biochemical Characterization of Human Guanylate Kinase and Mitochondrial Thymidine Kinase: Essential Enzymes for the Metabolic Activation of Nucleoside Analog Prodrugs Dissertation for the award of the degree “Doctor of Philosophy” (Ph.D.) Division of Mathematics and Natural Sciences of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen submitted by Nazimuddin from Charsadda, Pakistan Göttingen 2014 Member of the Thesis Committee: Dr. Manfred Konrad (Reviewer) Enzyme Biochemistry Research Group, Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry Member of the Thesis Committee: Dr. Kai Tittmann (Reviewer) Department of Bioanalytics, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen Member of the Thesis Committee: Dr. Matthias Dobbelstein Department of Molecular Oncology, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen Member of the Examination Committee: Dr. Thomas P. Burg Biological Micro- and Nanotechnology, Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry Member of the Examination Committee: Dr. Jochen Hub Department of Molecular Structural Biology, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen Member of the Examination Committee: Dr. Henning Urlaub Bioanalytical Mass Spectrometry Group, Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry Date of the oral Examination: February 5, 2015 Affidavit I hereby declare that the Thesis “Biochemical Characterization of Human Guanylate Kinase and Mitochondrial Thymidine Kinase: Essential Enzymes for the Metabolic Activation of Nucleoside Analog Prodrugs” has been written independently and with no other sources and aids than quoted. .............................................. Nazimuddin Göttingen, November 29, 2014 Dedication I dedicate this work to my mother “Fazilat Khan” who inspired me the most in my life because of her great kindness, love, wisdom, and elegance. Acknowledgments I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Dr. Manfred Konrad for offering me the opportunity to do my Ph.D. research work in the Enzyme Biochemistry Research Group. It was indeed an honor and great experience to work under his supervision, and in the very dynamic scientific environment of MPI-bpc, Goettingen. I am highly grateful for his guidance and great support in starting several collaborative projects. I am highly thankful to him for reviewing my PhD thesis, and for his very constructive critique and useful comments. My profound gratitude to the Ph.D. thesis committee members, Prof. Dr. Kai Tittmann and Prof. Dr. Matthias Dobbelstein, for reviewing my research work, constructive critique and for their useful feedback. I am highly thankful to all other members of the Ph.D. Examination Board Prof. Dr. Henning Urlaub, Dr. Thomas P. Burg, and Dr. Jochen Hub for their time and constructive comments. I am highly grateful to our research collaborators Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Parak, Nadeem Sabir and Dr. Susana Carregal from Philipps University of Marburg, Prof. Simone Techert and Rohit Jain from Structural Dynamics of (Bio)chemical Systems group at MPI-bpc Goettingen, Dr. Donghan Lee and Dr. Thomas Michael Sabo from NMR-based Structural Biology at MPI- bpc Goettingen, Dr. Vladimir Pena and Dr. Tales Rocha de Moura from Macromolecular Crystallography research group at MPI-bpc Goettingen, Dr. Andre Skirtach, Dr. Alexey Yashchenok from the department of interfaces at Max-Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces Golm/Potsdam, and Dr. Bogdan Parakhonskiy from University of Trento Italy, for their valuable discussions and contribution to this work. My special thanks to our colleague Frau Ursula Welscher-Altschäffel for helping me in learning biochemical techniques, and very often for her useful discussions and kind help. I am thankful to Dr. Christos Karamitros. It was a good time with him, and I found him a very hardworking guy. I am very thankful to Dr. Theresa McSorley for useful discussions and help. I enjoyed with them the weekly intragroup meetings and scientific discussions at daily lunchtime. Let me say thanks to Dr. Claudia Höbartner from nucleic acid chemistry and Dr. Thomas Jovin from cellular dynamics for our weekly seminars and discussions. V I am highly grateful to DAAD for their financial support and for providing me the opportunity to do my Ph.D. research in Germany. I am highly impressed the way how nicely they treat their awardees. I found DAAD a very well organized and high standard institution. I appreciate the GGNB team, and the whole GGNB program for giving opportunities to their researchers to participate in a huge variety of method and skill courses in order to expand their scientific horizon. My special gratitude and thanks to Dr. Kamal Chowdhury from MPI-bpc Goettingen for introducing me to Dr. Donghan Lee and helping me to start a very constructive work on NMR structural biology project. Very often in the bus to Fassberg (MPI-bpc), we used to discuss different topics including my always favorite Astronomy (how the universe works, Big Bang theory, birth of stars and their death, supermassive black holes, galaxies, planets, extraterrestrial life, Einstein theory of general relativity, quantum mechanics, string theory, dark matter and dark energy), honey bees, gardening, and politics. I am highly thankful to my friend Ali Ahmadian (Physicist) for his help in using Gnuplot software and for useful discussions. My very special thanks and respect to my parents (Badam Khan and Fazilat Khan), brothers, and sisters who always supported me. VI Abstract Deoxyribonucleoside and nucleotide kinases are key enzymes that catalyze the critical phosphorylation steps in the conversion of antiviral and anticancer nucleoside analogs to their corresponding cytotoxic nucleoside triphosphates for incorporation into DNA. In this work, I characterized three enzymes: Human guanylate kinase (hGMPK), human mitochondrial thymidine kinase (hTK2), and E.coli guanosine-inosine kinase (ecGSK). They were recombinantly produced and kinetically characterized. A series of mutations were introduced to understand the catalytic roles of specific residues. The enzymes were structurally characterized for substrate-induced conformational changes, and two novel assays were devised to study their kinetics. Our main aim was to provide a basis for their potential use in cancer chemotherapy. The hGMPK was recombinantly produced in catalytically active form although it was previously reported to be inactive upon production in E.coli. In order to explain the role of certain residues in catalysis, a series of point mutations were introduced in hGMPK by rational design applying the structural information of mouse GMPK, which is 88% identical to hGMPK allowing us to build a homology model. Interestingly, it was found that a single hydrogen bond between the active site S37 and the carbonyl oxygen of guanine in GMP substrate is critical for binding of GMP and catalysis. Disturbing this single hydrogen bond in the form of the S37A mutation adversely affected the catalytic activity. Besides its catalytic role, S37 is required for the dynamics of the hinge part that connects two structural regions designated as NMP-binding region (NMP-BR) and the CORE region. Its mutation to proline (S37P), which is the least flexible amino acid in terms of sterically allowed conformations, reduced the catalytic efficiency of hGMPK by about 103-fold making the molecule more like the non-enzymatic guanylate kinase domain of MAGUKs (membrane-associated guanylate kinase homologs). Similarly, the bidentate interaction of T83 with the carbonyl oxygen of guanine in GMP is required for catalysis. Y81 interacts with the phosphate of GMP and has a role in binary complex stabilization. We demonstrated in cell culture experiments that hGMPK, which catalyzes the second phosphorylation step in the final conversion of the antileukemic drug 6-thioguanine (6- TG) to 6-thioGTP/6-thiodGTP for incorporation into RNA and DNA, is the bottleneck enzyme in the metabolic activation of 6-TG, enhancing its cytotoxicity by several fold when overexpressed in HEK293 cells. VII Analyzing the SAXS structures of hGMPK in different conformational states, in particular in the open (unliganded) and completely closed (with two bound nucleotides) forms, revealed large conformational changes that occur during catalysis. The open-to-closed conformational transition of hGMPK induced by binding of ligands supports the model of the induced fit mechanism. In addition, we optimized the higher yield production of isotope-labeled (15N, 15N/13C) hGMPK for its structural analysis by NMR. GMP-induced 15N-1H HSQC (Heteronuclear Single Quantum Coherence) chemical shift changes for hGMPK mapped onto its open form confirmed our findings by SAXS studies that hGMPK undergoes substrate-induced conformational changes. In order to develop novel and advanced approaches for studying the catalytic properties of deoxyribonucleoside and nucleotide kinases, we devised two assays. In one assay, we used a CdS/ZnS quantum-dot (QDs)-modified gold electrode for the detection of hGMPK-catalyzed reaction in an enzyme-coupled assay based on the electrochemical sensing of NADH in a GMP concentration-dependent way. We also demonstrated the proof of concept of a light-controlled sensor for hGMPK immobilized on CdS/ZnS QDs-modified gold electrode. Similarly, we established an Amplex Red-based spectrophotometric and fluorometric enzyme-coupled assay for hGMPK as an alternative to the conventional NADH-dependent spectroscopic assay. Our new assay overcomes the overlapping wavelength problem associated with strong absorption of 6-thioguanine nucleotides at 340 nm, and it has the advantage