Direct Monitoring of the Reaction between Photochemically Generated Nitric Oxide and Mycobacterium tuberculosis Truncated Hemoglobin N Wild Type and Variant Forms: An Assessment of Computational Mechanistic Predictions.

The previously reported nitric oxide precursor [Mn(PaPy2Q)NO]ClO4 (1), where (PaPy2QH) is N,N-bis(2-pyridylmethyl)-amine-N-ethyl-2-quinoline-2-carboxamide, was used to investigate the interaction between NO and the protein truncated hemoglobin N (trHbN) from the pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Oxy-trHbN is exceptionally efficient at converting NO to nitrate, with a reported rate constant of 7.45 × 108 M–1 s–1 [Ouellet, H., et al. (2002) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 99, 5902] compared to 4 × 107 M–1 s–1 for oxy-myoglobin [Eich, R. F., et al. (1996) Biochemistry 35, 6976]. This work analyzed the NO dioxygenation kinetics of wild type oxy-trHbN and a set of variants, as well as the nitrosylation kinetics for the reduced (red-trHbN) forms of these proteins. The NO dioxygenation reaction was remarkably insensitive to mutations, even within the active site, while nitrosylation was somewhat more sensitive. Curiously, the most profound change to the rate constant for nitrosylation was effected by deletion o...