The Free Radical of the Anaerobic Ribonucleotide Reductase from Escherichia coli Is at Glycine 681

Abstract The anaerobic ribonucleoside triphosphate reductase of Escherichia coli is an iron-sulfur protein carrying an oxygen-sensitive organic radical, which is essential for catalysis. The radical was tentatively proposed to be on glycine 681, based on a comparison with the glycyl radical-containing enzyme pyruvate formate-lyase. By EPR spectroscopy of selectively 2H- and C-labeled anaerobic ribonucleotide reductase, the radical was now unambiguously assigned to carbon-2 of a glycine residue. The large 1H hyperfine splitting (1.4 millitesla) was assigned to the α-proton. Site-directed mutagenesis was used to change glycine 681 into an alanine residue. In separate experiments, the two adjacent residues, cysteine 680 and tyrosine 682, were changed into serine and phenylalanine, respectively. All mutated proteins were retained on dATP-Sepharose, indicating that the mutant proteins had intact allosteric sites. They also contained amounts of iron comparable with the wild type reductase and showed the same iron-sulfur-related spectrum, suggesting that the mutant proteins were properly folded. Of the three mutant proteins only the G681A protein completely lacked the detectable glycyl radical as well as enzyme activity. Our results identify glycine 681 as the stable free radical site in E. coli anaerobic ribonucleotide reductase.