Glutathione reductase turned into trypanothione reductase: structural analysis of an engineered change in substrate specificity.

Trypanosoma and Leishmania, pathogens responsible for diseases such as African sleeping sickness, Chagas' heart disease, or Oriental sore, are two of the very few genera that do not use the ubiquitous glutathione/glutathione reductase system to keep a stable cellular redox balance. Instead, they rely on trypanothione and trypanothione reductase to protect them from oxidative stress. Trypanothione reductase (TR) and the corresponding host enzyme, human red blood cell glutathione reductase (GR), belong to the same flavoprotein family. Despite their closely related three-dimensional structures and although their natural substrates share the common structural glutathione core, the two enzymes are mutually exclusive with respect to their disulfide substrates. This makes the parasite enzyme a potential target for antitrypanosomal drug design. While a large body of structural data on GR complexes is available, information on TR−ligand interactions is very limited. When the two amino acid changes Ala34Glu and Arg...