We discovered fortuitously that C-terminally truncated derivatives of HemA can be overexpressed using the T7 system and purified easily. The His6 tag construct used for most of this work is lacking the terminal six amino acids. The truncated derivatives are regulated like the wild type (Fig. 2). We investigated this system Selleckchem Panobinostat further, particularly because the purified preparation of otherwise wild-type protein was red in color, and spectroscopy showed the presence of heme, likely a b-type heme (Fig. 1a). The second important finding is that C170 is essential both for the tight binding of heme to HemA protein, leading to copurification as observed in the overexpression experiments, but also for correct (i.e.

wild type) regulation when the gene is expressed from the native hemA locus in the S. enterica chromosome, with no other differences from the wild type (no truncation). The increased abundance and significantly extended half-life (Figs 3 and 5) clearly establish C170A as a regulatory mutant. These results suggest that the presence of tightly bound heme may tag HemA protein for degradation. Tagging fails in the mutant, and the protein is thereby

stabilized. The crystal structure for HemA from Methanopyrus kandleri, a thermophilic archaeon, has been resolved (Moser et al., 2001). An N-terminal catalytic domain contains the essential conserved cysteine residue (C50 in S. enterica), a second domain binds NADPH, and Dapagliflozin in vitro the extreme C-terminus is implicated in dimer formation (Lüer et al., 2005; Nogaj & Beale, Resminostat 2005). Among characterized HemA proteins, only E. coli and S. enterica possess a cysteine at position 170; the homologous position in HemA from most other sources contains valine (Brody et al., 1999). The biochemical characterization of the association of heme with HemA is only preliminary. We observed very tight binding (stable to 6 M guanidine-HCl), and yet it is sensitive to thiol reagents. Heme is bound only to a small fraction of HemA (the heme : protein

ratio is ∼1 : 20). The connection between these observations and the stoichiometric (1 : 1) heme present in C. vibrioforme HemA is not clear. Because the residue C170 essential for regulation and heme binding in Salmonella is not conserved in the Chlorobium gene, we suggest that the mechanism of binding might be substantially different in the two proteins. This work was supported by Public Health Service grants 6M40403 and GM63616. The authors thank Andrew Shiemke and Courtney Williamson for their assistance with absorption spectrometry. Fig. S1. Heme removal from protein with 6 M guanidine-HCl. Table S1. Strains and plasmids. Please note: Wiley-Blackwell is not responsible for the content or functionality of any supporting materials supplied by the authors. Any queries (other than missing material) should be directed to the corresponding author for the article.