Overexpression, purification, crystallization and preliminary structural studies of catabolic ornithine transcarbamylase from Lactobacillus hilgardii

The catabolic ornithine transcarbamylase (cOTC; EC 2.1.3.3) from the lactic acid bacteria Lactobacillus hilgardii is a key protein involved in the degradation of arginine during malolactic fermentation. cOTC containing an N-terminal His6 tag has been overexpressed in Escherichia coli, purified and crystallized under two different experimental conditions using the hanging-drop vapour-diffusion method. Crystals obtained from a solution containing 8%(w/v) PEG 4000, 75 mM sodium acetate pH 4.6 belong to the trigonal space group P321 and have unit-cell parameters a = b = 157.04, c = 79.28 Å. Conversely, crystals grown in 20%(v/v) 2-methyl-2,4-pentanediol, 7.5%(w/v) PEG 4000, 100 mM HEPES pH 7.8 belong to the monoclinic space group C2 and have unit-cell parameters a = 80.06, b = 148.90, c = 91.67 Å, [beta] = 100.25°. Diffraction data were collected in-house to 3.00 and 2.91 Å resolution for trigonal and monoclinic crystals, respectively. The estimated Matthews coefficient for the crystal forms were 2.36 and 2.24 Å3 Da-1, respectively, corresponding to 48% and 45% solvent content. In both cases, the results are consistent with the presence of three protein subunits in the asymmetric unit. The structure of cOTC has been determined by the molecular-replacement method using the atomic coordinates of cOTC from Pseudomonas aeruginosa (PDB code 1dxh) as the search model

JMM thanks the Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia for a research grant (BFU2004-01554/BMC; DGCYT) and `Factoría de Cristalización' Consolider-Ingenio 2010 for support of his research and also Dr Juliana Sanz for her helpful discussions. This work was also supported by grants AGL2005-00470 (CICYT) and S-0505/AGR000153 (CAM). HR is a recipient of a I3P predoctoral fellowship from the CSIC.

Peer reviewed