Biomaterial Database

Structure and function of urea amidolyase. 2018

Jing Zhao, and Li Zhu, and Chen Fan, and Yi Wu, and Song Xiang

Key Laboratory of Nutrition and Metabolism, Institute for Nutritional Sciences, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200031, China.

Urea is the degradation product of a wide range of nitrogen containing bio-molecules. Urea amidolyase (UA) catalyzes the conversion of urea to ammonium, the essential first step in utilizing urea as a nitrogen source. It is widely distributed in fungi, bacteria and other microorganisms, and plays an important role in nitrogen recycling in the biosphere. UA is composed of urea carboxylase (UC) and allophanate hydrolase (AH) domains, which catalyze sequential reactions. In some organisms UC and AH are encoded by separated genes. We present here structure of the Kluyveromyces lactis UA (KlUA). The structure revealed that KlUA forms a compact homo-dimer with a molecular weight of 400 kDa. Structure inspired biochemical experiments revealed the mechanism of its reaction intermediate translocation, and that the KlUA holo-enzyme formation is essential for its optimal activity. Interestingly, previous studies and ours suggest that UC and AH encoded by separated genes probably do not form a KlUA-like complex, consequently they might not catalyze the urea to ammonium conversion as efficiently.

UI	MeSH Term	Description	Entries
D007700	Kinetics	The rate dynamics in chemical or physical systems.
D007716	Kluyveromyces	An ascomycetous yeast of the fungal family Saccharomycetaceae, order SACCHAROMYCETALES.	Kluyveromyce
D009584	Nitrogen	An element with the atomic symbol N, atomic number 7, and atomic weight [14.00643; 14.00728]. Nitrogen exists as a diatomic gas and makes up about 78% of the earth's atmosphere by volume. It is a constituent of proteins and nucleic acids and found in all living cells.
D011487	Protein Conformation	The characteristic 3-dimensional shape of a protein, including the secondary, supersecondary (motifs), tertiary (domains) and quaternary structure of the peptide chain. PROTEIN STRUCTURE, QUATERNARY describes the conformation assumed by multimeric proteins (aggregates of more than one polypeptide chain).	Conformation, Protein,Conformations, Protein,Protein Conformations
D002384	Catalysis	The facilitation of a chemical reaction by material (catalyst) that is not consumed by the reaction.	Catalyses
D013329	Structure-Activity Relationship	The relationship between the chemical structure of a compound and its biological or pharmacological activity. Compounds are often classed together because they have structural characteristics in common including shape, size, stereochemical arrangement, and distribution of functional groups.	Relationship, Structure-Activity,Relationships, Structure-Activity,Structure Activity Relationship,Structure-Activity Relationships
D014508	Urea	A compound formed in the liver from ammonia produced by the deamination of amino acids. It is the principal end product of protein catabolism and constitutes about one half of the total urinary solids.	Basodexan,Carbamide,Carmol
D019731	Carbon-Nitrogen Ligases	Enzymes that catalyze the joining of two molecules by the formation of a carbon-nitrogen bond. EC 6.3.	Carbon Nitrogen Ligases,Ligases, Carbon-Nitrogen
D064751	Ammonium Compounds	Inorganic compounds that include a positively charged tetrahedral nitrogen (ammonium ion) as part of their structure. This class of compounds includes a broad variety of simple ammonium salts and derivatives.	Ammonium