Organism-adapted specificity of the allosteric regulation of pyruvate kinase in lactic acid bacteria

PLoS Comput Biol. 2013;9(7):e1003159. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003159. Epub 2013 Jul 25.

Abstract

Pyruvate kinase (PYK) is a critical allosterically regulated enzyme that links glycolysis, the primary energy metabolism, to cellular metabolism. Lactic acid bacteria rely almost exclusively on glycolysis for their energy production under anaerobic conditions, which reinforces the key role of PYK in their metabolism. These organisms are closely related, but have adapted to a huge variety of native environments. They include food-fermenting organisms, important symbionts in the human gut, and antibiotic-resistant pathogens. In contrast to the rather conserved inhibition of PYK by inorganic phosphate, the activation of PYK shows high variability in the type of activating compound between different lactic acid bacteria. System-wide comparative studies of the metabolism of lactic acid bacteria are required to understand the reasons for the diversity of these closely related microorganisms. These require knowledge of the identities of the enzyme modifiers. Here, we predict potential allosteric activators of PYKs from three lactic acid bacteria which are adapted to different native environments. We used protein structure-based molecular modeling and enzyme kinetic modeling to predict and validate potential activators of PYK. Specifically, we compared the electrostatic potential and the binding of phosphate moieties at the allosteric binding sites, and predicted potential allosteric activators by docking. We then made a kinetic model of Lactococcus lactis PYK to relate the activator predictions to the intracellular sugar-phosphate conditions in lactic acid bacteria. This strategy enabled us to predict fructose 1,6-bisphosphate as the sole activator of the Enterococcus faecalis PYK, and to predict that the PYKs from Streptococcus pyogenes and Lactobacillus plantarum show weaker specificity for their allosteric activators, while still having fructose 1,6-bisphosphate play the main activator role in vivo. These differences in the specificity of allosteric activation may reflect adaptation to different environments with different concentrations of activating compounds. The combined computational approach employed can readily be applied to other enzymes.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Allosteric Regulation
  • Amino Acid Sequence
  • Lactobacillus / metabolism*
  • Molecular Sequence Data
  • Pyruvate Kinase / chemistry
  • Pyruvate Kinase / metabolism*
  • Sequence Homology, Amino Acid

Substances

  • Pyruvate Kinase

Grants and funding

The authors gratefully acknowledge support of the Systems Biology of Microorganisms Network (SysMO: www.sysmo.net) for the SysMO-LAB and SysMO-LAB2 projects (Grant Numbers: 0313979A, 0315788B) with funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). All authors would also like to thank the Klaus Tschira Foundation (www.klaus-tschira-stiftung.de/) for support. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.