Date of Award

1-1-2017

Document Type

Masters Thesis

Degree Name

M.S.

Organizational Unit

Chemistry and Biochemistry

First Advisor

John A. Latham, Ph.D.

Second Advisor

Schuyler van Engelenburg

Third Advisor

Martin Margittai

Fourth Advisor

Gareth Eaton

Keywords

Mechanism, Mycofactocin pathway, Peptide modification, Radical SAM enzyme, Radical S-adenosyl L-methionine enxyme, SPASM domain

Abstract

Mycofactocin is a putative peptide-derived redox cofactor in Mycobacterium family. Its putative biosynthetic pathway is encoded by the operon mftABCDEF. The initial step of this pathway is a posttranslational modification of a peptide precursor MftA, which is catalyzed by MftC enzyme. This modification only occurs in the presence of chaperone MftB. Here, we demonstrate that MftC is a radical S-adenosyl L-methionine (SAM) enzyme and we examine its catalytic mechanism. We show that the modification of MftA requires two equivalents of SAM and is implemented in two steps: (i) the decarboxylation of a C-terminal tyrosine, resulting in formation of an intermediate with a carbon-carbon double bond, and (ii) the cross-linking of the tyrosine with the penultimate valine, leading to formation of a cyclized product. We also show that MftC is able to modify unnatural peptide substrates, resulting in formation of specific and non-specific products.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Rights Holder

Bulat Khaliullin

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Format

application/pdf

Language

en

File Size

68 p.

Discipline

Chemistry, Biochemistry



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