Urea-induced Inactivation and Unfolding of Recombinant Phospholipid Hydroperoxide Glutathione Peroxidase from Oryza sativa

Phospholipid hydroperoxide glutathione peroxidase is an antioxidant enzyme that has the highest capability of reducing membrane-bound hydroperoxy lipids as compared to free organic and inorganic hydroperoxides amongst the glutathione peroxidases.In this study,urea-induced effects on the inactivation and unfolding of a recombinant phospholipid hydroperoxide glutathione peroxidase（PHGPx）from Oryza sativa were investigated by means of circular dichroism and fluorescence spectroscopy.With the increase of urea concentration,the residual activity of OsPHGPx decreases correspondingly.When the urea concentration is above 5.0 mol/L,there was no residual activity.In addition,the observed changes in intrinsic tryptophan fluorescence,the binding of the hydrophobic fluorescence probe ANS,and the far UV CD describe a common dependence on the concentration of urea suggesting that the conformational features of the native OsPHGPx are lost in a highly cooperative single transition.The unfolding process comprises of three zones：the native base-line zone between 0 and 2.5 mol/L urea,the transition zone between 2.5 and 5.5 mol/L urea,and the denatured base-line zone above 5.5 mol/L urea.The transition zone has a midpoint at about 4.0 mol/L urea.

Phospholipid Hydroperoxide Glutathione Peroxidase(PHGPx): More Than an Antioxidant Enzyme?

The family of glutathione peroxidases encompasses, as far, three tetrameric glutathione'peroxidases (GPx) and the monomeric PHGPx. Although the overall homology between tetrameric enzymes and PHGPx is less than 30%, a pronounced similarity has been detected on clusters involved in the active site and a common catalytic triad (selenocysteine glutamine and tryptophan) has been defined by structural and kinetic data.A major peculiar feature of the reaction catalyzed by PHGPx is the possibility to accommodate large lipophilic substrates. This accounts for the observed dramatic antiperoxidant effect and the synergism with vitamin E.Moreover, the reduction of lipid hydroperoxides accounts also for the observed modulation of cycloxygenase and inhibition of 15-lipoxygenase.On the other hand, structural and kinetic data indicate that also the specificity of PHGPx for the donor substrate is not restricted to GSH and the recent observation the PHGPx binds to specific mitochondrial proteins, from which it is released by ionic strength and thiols, suggests a possible fole of this seleooenzyme'in catalyzing the specific oxidation of protein thiols,thus modulating the activity of cellular regulatory elements. on this light, the selenium mojety of PHGPx, reacting much faster that thiols with a peroxide, and then oxidizing specific protein thiols, would channel the oxidation toward protein targets, thus providing, by protein-protein interaction, the specificity of the redox transition

Primary Structural Characterization of Phospholipid Hydroperoxide Glutathione Peroxidase

More than 20 sequences of phospholipid hydroperoxide glutathione peroxidase (PHGPX) from a sequence database were analyzed. The analyses show that the primary structures of most PHGPX proteins have three highly conserved regions forming a catalytic center and have more than 50% amino acid sequence identity in common. However, two PHGPXs from bovine and swine with the same function have very low similarity with typical PHGPXs and do not have the three highly conserved regions. Thus, the PHGPX proteins are divided into two types: those with the three highly conserved regions, designated as PHGPX I, and the others as PHGPX II. In general, type I proteins are composed of ca.170 amino acid residues; a few of them have an extra signal peptide sequence at the N terminal of the protein. The composition of plant and animal PHGPX amino acids is very different, with most plant PHGPXs being weak acidic, while most animal ones are alkaline. Another specific conservative motif is also found in plant PHGPX proteins. System evolution analysis shows that ortholog and paralog evolution models both exist in PHGPXs, with the plant PHGPX and the animal PHGPX diverging exclusively into two branches in PHGPX I. The information revealed by the evolution tree agrees with the general species evolution process from low to advanced and from simple to complicated.