Characterization of calmodulin-free murine inducible nitric-oxide synthase

PLoS One. 2015 Mar 30;10(3):e0121782. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0121782. eCollection 2015.

Abstract

Nitric-Oxide Synthase (NOS), that produces the biological signal molecule Nitric-Oxide (NO), exists in three different isoforms called, neuronal (nNOS), endothelial (eNOS) and inducible (iNOS). All NOS isoforms require post-translational interaction with the calcium-binding protein, calmodulin (CaM) for manifesting their catalytic activity. However, CaM has been suggested to control the translational assembly of the enzyme as well, particularly in helping its inducible isoform, iNOS assume a stable, heme-replete, dimeric and active form. Expression of recombinant murine iNOS in E.coli in the absence of CaM has been previously shown to give extremely poor yield of the enzyme which was claimed to be absolutely heme-free, devoid of flavins, completely monomeric and catalytically inactive when compared to the heme-replete, active, dimeric iNOS, generated through co-expression with CaM. In contrast, we found that although iNOS expressed without CaM does produce significantly low amounts of the CaM-free enzyme, the iNOS thus produced, is not completely devoid of heme and is neither entirely monomeric nor absolutely bereft of catalytic activity as reported before. In fact, iNOS synthesized in the absence of CaM undergoes compromised heme incorporation resulting in extremely poor dimerization and activity compared to its counterpart co-expressed with CaM. Moreover, such CaM-free iNOS has similar flavin content and reductase activity as iNOS co-expressed with CaM, suggesting that CaM may not be as much required for the functional assembly of the iNOS reductase domain as its oxygenase domain. LC-MS/MS-based peptide mapping of the CaM-free iNOS confirmed that it had the same full-length sequence as the CaM-replete iNOS. Isothermal calorimetric measurements also revealed high affinity for CaM binding in the CaM-free iNOS and thus the possible presence of a CaM-binding domain. Thus CaM is essential but not indispensible for the assembly of iNOS and such CaM-free iNOS may help in elucidating the role of CaM on iNOS catalysis.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Amino Acid Sequence
  • Animals
  • Calmodulin / genetics
  • Calmodulin / isolation & purification
  • Calmodulin / metabolism
  • Escherichia coli / genetics
  • Escherichia coli / metabolism
  • Heme / analysis
  • Kinetics
  • Mice
  • Molecular Sequence Data
  • Nitric Oxide Synthase Type II / genetics
  • Nitric Oxide Synthase Type II / isolation & purification
  • Nitric Oxide Synthase Type II / metabolism*
  • Protein Multimerization
  • Recombinant Proteins / genetics
  • Recombinant Proteins / isolation & purification
  • Recombinant Proteins / metabolism

Substances

  • Calmodulin
  • Recombinant Proteins
  • Heme
  • Nitric Oxide Synthase Type II
  • Nos2 protein, mouse

Grants and funding

Funded by Research Grant for Teachers by the University of Calcutta. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.