Enzymatic activity of the blue light-regulated phosphodiesterase BlrP1 from Klebsiella pneumoniae shows a nonlinear dependence on light intensity.

The blue light-regulated phosphodiesterase BlrP1 from Klebsiella pneumoniae hydrolyzes cyclic dimeric guanosine monophosphate (GMP) in a blue-light-dependent manner. It contains a photo-sensing BLUF domain and a functional EAL domain. Previously, it was reported that conformational changes in the dimer upon light illumination occurred only when both protomers of the dimer were excited. Based on this observation, it was proposed that BlrP1 might be a nonlinear light intensity sensor. To test this, here, the correlation between the turnover number of the hydrolysis reaction (kcat ) and the fraction of the excited protein (fred ) was measured by simultaneously monitoring the reaction rate and fred . Our results show that kcat is proportional to fred2 . Thus, BlrP1 works as a nonlinear light intensity sensor to sense a strong light environment.