Frontiers in Microbiology (Mar 2023)

Structural analysis of the housecleaning nucleoside triphosphate pyrophosphohydrolase MazG from Mycobacterium tuberculosis

  • Sen Wang,
  • Baocai Gao,
  • Anke Chen,
  • Zhifei Zhang,
  • Sheng Wang,
  • Liangdong Lv,
  • Guoping Zhao,
  • Guoping Zhao,
  • Jixi Li,
  • Jixi Li

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2023.1137279
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 14

Abstract

Read online

The housecleaning enzyme of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), MazG, is a nucleoside triphosphate pyrophosphohydrolase (NTP-PPase) and can hydrolyze all canonical or non-canonical NTPs into NMPs and pyrophosphate. The Mycobacterium tuberculosis MazG (Mtb-MazG) contributes to antibiotic resistance in response to oxidative or nitrosative stress under dormancy, making it a promising target for treating TB in latent infection patients. However, the structural basis of Mtb-MazG is not clear. Here we describe the crystal structure of Mtb-MazG (1–185) at 2.7 Å resolution, composed of two similar folded spherical domains in tandem. Unlike other all-α NTP pyrophosphatases, Mtb-MazG has an N-terminal extra region composed of three α-helices and five β-strands. The second domain is global, with five α-helices located in the N-terminal domain. Gel-filtration assay and SAXS analysis show that Mtb-MazG forms an enzyme-active dimer in solution. In addition, the metal ion Mg2+ is bound with four negative-charged residues Glu119, Glu122, Glu138, and Asp141. Different truncations and site-directed mutagenesis revealed that the full-length dimeric form and the metal ion Mg2+ are indispensable for the catalytic activity of Mtb-MazG. Thus, our work provides new insights into understanding the molecular basis of Mtb-MazG.

Keywords