A Novel Type of Nitric-oxide Reductase

• Published in: The Journal of biological chemistry 2002-07, Vol.277 (28), p.25273-25276
• Main Authors: Gomes, Cláudio M., Giuffrè, Alessandro, Forte, Elena, Vicente, João B., Saraiva, Lı́gia M., Brunori, Maurizio, Teixeira, Miguel
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0021-9258; 1083-351X
• DOI: 10.1074/jbc.M203886200

Escherichia coli flavorubredoxin is a member of the family of the A-type flavoproteins, which are built by two core domains: a metallo-β-lactamase-like domain, at the N-terminal region, harboring a non-heme di-iron site, and a flavodoxin-like domain, containing one FMN moiety. The enzyme fromE. coli has an extra module at the C terminus, containing a rubredoxin-like center. The A-type flavoproteins are widespread among strict and facultative anaerobes, as deduced from the analysis of the complete prokaryotic genomes. In this report we showed that the recombinant enzyme purified from E. coli has nitric-oxide reductase activity with a turnover number of ∼15 mol of NO·mol enzyme−1·s−1, which was well within the range of those determined for the canonical hemeb3 -FeB containing nitric-oxide reductases (e.g. ∼10–50 mol NO·mol enzyme−1·s−1 for the Paracoccus denitrificans NOR). Furthermore, it was shown that the activity was due to the A-type flavoprotein core, as the rubredoxin domain alone exhibited no activity. Thus, a novel family of prokaryotic NO reductases, with a non-heme di-iron site as the catalytic center, was established.