Crystal structure of cindoxin, the P450cin redox partner.

The crystal structure of the flavin mononucleotide (FMN)-containing redox partner to P450cin, cindoxin (Cdx), has been determined to 1.3 A resolution. The overall structure is similar to that of the FMN domain of human cytochrome P450 reductase. A Brownian dynamics–molecular dynamics docking method was used to produce a model of Cdx with its redox partner, P450cin. This Cdx–P450cin model highlights the potential importance of Cdx Tyr96 in bridging the FMN and heme cofactors as well P450cin Arg102 and Arg346. Each of the single-site Ala mutants exhibits ∼10% of the wild-type activity, thus demonstrating the importance of these residues for binding and/or electron transfer. In the well-studied P450cam system, redox partner binding stabilizes the open low-spin conformation of P450cam and greatly decreases the stability of the oxy complex. In sharp contrast, Cdx does not shift P450cin to a low-spin state, although the stability of oxy-P450cin is decreased 10-fold in the presence of Cdx. This indicates that Cd...