The Minimum Activation Peptide from ilvH Can Activate the Catalytic Subunit of AHAS from Different Species

Acetohydroxyacid synthases (AHASs), which catalyze the first step in the biosynthesis of branched‐chain amino acids, are composed of a catalytic subunit (CSU) and a regulatory subunit (RSU). The CSU harbors the catalytic site, and the RSU is responsible for the activation and feedback regulation of the CSU. Previous results from Chipman and co‐workers and our lab have shown that heterologous activation can be achieved among isozymes of Escherichia coli AHAS. It would be interesting to find the minimum peptide of ilvH (the RSU of E. coli AHAS III) that could activate other E. coli CSUs, or even those of ## species. In this paper, C‐terminal, N‐terminal, and C‐ and N‐terminal truncation mutants of ilvH were constructed. The minimum peptide to activate ilvI (the CSU of E. coli AHAS III) was found to be Δ_N14–Δ_C89. Moreover, this peptide could not only activate its homologous ilvI and heterologous ilvB (CSU of E. coli AHAS I), but also heterologously activate the CSUs of AHAS from Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Arabidopsis thaliana, and Nicotiana plumbaginifolia. However, this peptide totally lost its ability for feedback regulation by valine, thus suggesting different elements for enzymatic activation and feedback regulation. Additionally, the apparent dissociation constant (K_d) of Δ_N14–Δ_C89 when binding CSUs of different species was found to be 9.3–66.5 μM by using microscale thermophoresis. The ability of this peptide to activate different CSUs does not correlate well with its binding ability (K_d) to these CSUs, thus implying that key interactions by specific residues is more important than binding ability in promoting enzymatic reactions. The high sequence similarity of the peptide Δ_N14–Δ_C89 to RSUs across species hints that this peptide represents the minimum activation motif in RSU and that it regulates all AHASs.