0000000000311345
AUTHOR
Cindy Rosenthal
Crystal Structure of Perakine Reductase, Founding Member of a Novel Aldo-Keto Reductase (AKR) Subfamily That Undergoes Unique Conformational Changes during NADPH Binding
Perakine reductase (PR) catalyzes the NADPH-dependent reduction of the aldehyde perakine to yield the alcohol raucaffrinoline in the biosynthetic pathway of ajmaline in Rauvolfia, a key step in indole alkaloid biosynthesis. Sequence alignment shows that PR is the founder of the new AKR13D subfamily and is designated AKR13D1. The x-ray structure of methylated His(6)-PR was solved to 2.31 Å. However, the active site of PR was blocked by the connected parts of the neighbor symmetric molecule in the crystal. To break the interactions and obtain the enzyme-ligand complexes, the A213W mutant was generated. The atomic structure of His(6)-PR-A213W complex with NADPH was determined at 1.77 Å. Overal…
Expression, purification, crystallization and preliminary X-ray analysis of perakine reductase, a new member of the aldo-keto reductase enzyme superfamily from higher plants
Perakine reductase (PR) is a novel member of the aldo-keto reductase enzyme superfamily from higher plants. PR from the plant Rauvolfia serpentina is involved in the biosynthesis of monoterpenoid indole alkaloids by performing NADPH-dependent reduction of perakine, yielding raucaffrinoline. However, PR can also reduce cinnamic aldehyde and some of its derivatives. After heterologous expression of a triple mutant of PR in Escherichia coli, crystals of the purified and methylated enzyme were obtained by the hanging-drop vapour-diffusion technique at 293 K with 100 mM sodium citrate pH 5.6 and 27% PEG 4000 as precipitant. Crystals belong to space group C222(1) and diffract to 2.0 A, with unit-…