Abstract
The bacterial catabolism of lignin and its breakdown products is of interest for applications in industrial processing of ligno-biomass. The gallate degradation pathway ofPseudomonas putidaKT2440 requires a 4-carboxy-2-hydroxymuconate (CHM) hydratase (GalB), which has a 12% sequence identity to a previously identified CHM hydratase (LigJ) fromSphingomonassp. SYK-6. The structure of GalB was determined and found to be a member of the PIG-LN-acetylglucosamine deacetylase family; GalB is structurally distinct from the amidohydrolase fold of LigJ. LigJ has the same stereospecificity as GalB, providing an example of convergent evolution for catalytic conversion of a common metabolite in bacterial aromatic degradation pathways. Purified GalB contains a bound Zn(2+)cofactor; however the enzyme is capable of using Fe(2+)and Co(2+)with similar efficiency. The general base aspartate in the PIG-L deacetylases is an alanine in GalB; replacement of the alanine with aspartate decreased the GalB catalytic efficiency for CHM by 9.5 × 10(4)-fold, and the variant enzyme did not have any detectable hydrolase activity. Kinetic analyses and pH dependence studies of the wild type and variant enzymes suggested roles for Glu-48 and His-164 in the catalytic mechanism. A comparison with the PIG-L deacetylases led to a proposed mechanism for GalB wherein Glu-48 positions and activates the metal-ligated water for the hydration reaction and His-164 acts as a catalytic acid.