ACS Catalysis
Letter
To gain insights into the acceptor substrate specificity,
chemo- and stereoselectivity of MarH, compounds with similar
structures as Cml (18−21) were tested as putative acetyl
acceptors in the in vitro assays (Figure 3A). HPLC and HR-MS
analysis revealed that only 18 was acetylated by MarH,
generating four acetylated products (Figure 3B and Table
S3). To elucidate the structures of these products, 23, 24, and
25 were purified from a biotransformation of 18 using E. coli
BL21(DE3) containing pET28a-marH. NMR analysis (SI)
revealed that 23 and 24 were indeed diacetylated products
As before, the acylation position was assigned on the basis of
chemical shift variations of the adjacent hydrogen atoms and
furthermore confirmed by HMBC data. Notably, the amino
group of all three products was acetylated. However, only trace
amounts of 22 could be obtained that were insufficient for
NMR analysis. Because the mono-O-acetylated products of
Cml were always observed as an interconvertible mixture and
no further peaks with the same HR-MS as 22 were found, we
concluded that 22 might be the N-acetylated product of 18.
The low amounts of 22 accumulated in the biotransformation
of 18 by MarH implicated that MarH first catalyzed the
acetylation of the amino group of 18, further initiating the 3-O-
acetylation of 18 that proceeded with a faster reaction rate. To
verify this assumption, we carried out time-dependent
enzymatic assays of MarH with 18 and Ac-CoA as substrates
(Figure S11). This time-course analysis not only confirmed this
hypothesis but also showed that 23 could spontaneously react
to 24 that was further acetylated to 25 (Figure 3C and S12).
MarH could catalyze the acetyl transfer to 18, but not to 19,
exhibiting the stringent (1R,2R)-selectivity. Because 20 and 21
could not be acetylated by MarH, we speculated that the nitro
group is essential for substrate binding to MarH. Taken
together, MarH was proven to be a robust enzyme that not
only functions as an epimerase18 but also acts as an O- and N-
acyltransferase.
Finally, to test whether marH could function as a Cml
resistance gene in vivo, the anti-Cml bioassay was carried out
using E. coli BL21(DE3) strains containing the expression
plasmid pET28a-marH and the control plasmid pET28a as
indicator strains, respectively. The strain E. coli BL21(DE3)/
pET28a cannot grow on LB-agar medium containing Cml
while the strain E. coli BL21(DE3)/pET28a-marH showed an
anti-Cml effect (Figure S13). These findings indicated that
MarH can be used not only as a robust acyltransferase but also
as a Cml resistance gene in vivo.
In summary, we have discovered a group of small cupin
proteins (129−132 aa residues), which can catalyze not only
epimerization of β-methylindolepyruvate but also esterification
and amide bond formation of Cml by acting as a dual
acyltransferase. Studies of the reaction kinetics indicated that
these small cupin proteins had comparative catalytic efficiency
to canonical CATs. By systematic point mutation study, H64
was discovered to be the key active site and a similar catalytic
model was proposed to that of CATs. Overall, MarH showed
multifunctional properties, flexible substrate specificity, and
strict regio- and enantioselectivity, providing a potential to be
explored as an efficient biocatalyst used for organic synthesis.
Experimental details, NMR, Q-TOF, and other supple-
AUTHOR INFORMATION
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Corresponding Authors
Author Contributions
‡These authors contributed equally (M.H. and H.Y.).
Notes
The authors declare no competing financial interest.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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We thank Professor Wen Liu at Shanghai Institute of Organic
Chemistry CAS for gifting acyl CoAs. This work was financially
supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of
China (31425001 and 21372154 for S.L.; 31121064 for Z.D.)
and the grants from MOE of China and the Leopoldina
Fellowship Program (German National Academy of Sciences
Leopoldina, LPDS 2013-12 for N.L.B.).
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ACS Catal. 2016, 6, 788−792