Reduced pyrazinamidase activity and the natural resistance of Mycobacterium kansasii to the antituberculosis drug pyrazinamide.
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Pyrazinamide (PZA), an analog of nicotinamide, is a prodrug that requires conversion to the bactericidal compound pyrazinoic acid (POA) by the bacterial pyrazinamidase (PZase) activity of nicotinamidase to show activity against Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Mutations leading to a loss of PZase activity cause PZA resistance in M. tuberculosis. M. kansasii is naturally resistant to PZA and has reduced PZase activity along with an apparently detectable nicotinamidase activity. The role of the reduction in PZase activity in the natural PZA resistance of M. kansasii is unknown. The MICs of PZA and POA for M. kansasii were determined to be 500 and 125 micrograms/ml, respectively. Using [14C]PZA and [14C]nicotinamide, we found that M. kansasii had about 5-fold-less PZase activity and about 25-fold-less nicotinamidase activity than M. tuberculosis. The M. kansasii pncA gene was cloned on a 1.8-kb BamHI DNA fragment, using M. avium pncA probe. Sequence analysis showed that the M. kansasii pncA gene encoded a protein with homology to its counterparts from M. tuberculosis (69.9%), M. avium (65.6%), and Escherichia coli (28.5%). Transformation of naturally PZA-resistant M. bovis BCG with M. kansasii pncA conferred partial PZA susceptibility. Transformation of M. kansasii with M. avium pncA caused functional expression of PZase and high-level susceptibility to PZA, indicating that the natural PZA resistance in M. kansasii results from a reduced PZase activity. Like M. tuberculosis, M. kansasii accumulated POA in the cells at an acidic pH; however, due to its highly active POA efflux pump, the naturally PZA-resistant species M. smegmatis did not. These findings suggest the existence of a weak POA efflux mechanism in M. kansasii. (+info)
Mycobacterium smegmatis has two pyrazinamidase enzymes, PncA and pzaA.
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The Mycobacterium smegmatis pncA gene, encoding nicotinamidase/pyrazinamidase, was identified. While it was similar to counterparts from other mycobacteria, the M. smegmatis PncA had little homology to the other M. smegmatis pyrazinamidase/nicotinamidase, encoded by the pzaA gene. Transformation of Mycobacterium bovis strain BCG with M. smegmatis pncA or pzaA conferred susceptibility to pyrazinamide. (+info)
Expression of Mycobacterium smegmatis pyrazinamidase in Mycobacterium tuberculosis confers hypersensitivity to pyrazinamide and related amides.
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A pyrazinamidase (PZase)-deficient pncA mutant of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, constructed by allelic exchange, was used to investigate the effects of heterologous amidase gene expression on the susceptibility of this organism to pyrazinamide (PZA) and related amides. The mutant was highly resistant to PZA (MIC, >2,000 microg/ml), in accordance with the well-established role of pncA in the PZA susceptibility of M. tuberculosis (A. Scorpio and Y. Zhang, Nat. Med. 2:662-667, 1996). Integration of the pzaA gene encoding the major PZase/nicotinamidase from Mycobacterium smegmatis (H. I. M. Boshoff and V. Mizrahi, J. Bacteriol. 180:5809-5814, 1998) or the M. tuberculosis pncA gene into the pncA mutant complemented its PZase/nicotinamidase defect. In both pzaA- and pncA-complemented mutant strains, the PZase activity was detected exclusively in the cytoplasm, suggesting an intracellular localization for PzaA and PncA. The pzaA-complemented strain was hypersensitive to PZA (MIC, /=20 microg/ml) and was also sensitive to benzamide (MIC, 20 microg/ml), unlike the wild-type and pncA-complemented mutant strains, which were highly resistant to this amide (MIC, >500 microg/ml). This finding was consistent with the observation that benzamide is hydrolyzed by PzaA but not by PncA. Overexpression of PzaA also conferred sensitivity to PZA, nicotinamide, and benzamide on M. smegmatis (MIC, 150 microg/ml in all cases) and rendered Escherichia coli hypersensitive for growth at low pH. (+info)
The reported human NADsyn2 is ammonia-dependent NAD synthetase from a pseudomonad.
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Nicotinamide-adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) synthetases catalyze the last step in NAD+ metabolism in the de novo, import, and salvage pathways that originate from tryptophan (or aspartic acid), nicotinic acid, and nicotinamide, respectively, and converge on nicotinic acid mononucleotide. NAD+ synthetase converts nicotinic acid adenine dinucleotide to NAD+ via an adenylylated intermediate. All of the known eukaryotic NAD+ synthetases are glutamine-dependent, hydrolyzing glutamine to glutamic acid to provide the attacking ammonia. In the prokaryotic world, some NAD+ synthetases are glutamine-dependent, whereas others can only use ammonia. Earlier, we noted a perfect correlation between presence of a domain related to nitrilase and glutamine dependence and then proved in the accompanying paper (Bieganowski, P., Pace, H. C., and Brenner, C. (2003) J. Biol. Chem. 278, 33049-33055) that the nitrilase-related domain is an essential, obligate intramolecular, thiol-dependent glutamine amidotransferase in the yeast NAD+ synthetase, Qns1. Independently, human NAD+ synthetase was cloned and shown to depend on Cys-175 for glutamine-dependent but not ammonia-dependent NAD+ synthetase activity. Additionally, it was claimed that a 275 amino acid open reading frame putatively amplified from human glioma cell line LN229 encodes a human ammonia-dependent NAD+ synthetase and this was speculated largely to mediate NAD+ synthesis in human muscle tissues. Here we establish that the so-called NADsyn2 is simply ammonia-dependent NAD+ synthetase from Pseudomonas, which is encoded on an operon with nicotinic acid phosphoribosyltransferase and, in some Pseudomonads, with nicotinamidase. (+info)
Nicotinamide clearance by Pnc1 directly regulates Sir2-mediated silencing and longevity.
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The Saccharomyces cerevisiae Sir2 protein is an NAD(+)-dependent histone deacetylase (HDAC) that functions in transcriptional silencing and longevity. The NAD(+) salvage pathway protein, Npt1, regulates Sir2-mediated processes by maintaining a sufficiently high intracellular NAD(+) concentration. However, another NAD(+) salvage pathway component, Pnc1, modulates silencing independently of the NAD(+) concentration. Nicotinamide (NAM) is a by-product of the Sir2 deacetylase reaction and is a natural Sir2 inhibitor. Pnc1 is a nicotinamidase that converts NAM to nicotinic acid. Here we show that recombinant Pnc1 stimulates Sir2 HDAC activity in vitro by preventing the accumulation of NAM produced by Sir2. In vivo, telomeric, rDNA, and HM silencing are differentially sensitive to inhibition by NAM. Furthermore, PNC1 overexpression suppresses the inhibitory effect of exogenously added NAM on silencing, life span, and Hst1-mediated transcriptional repression. Finally, we show that stress suppresses the inhibitory effect of NAM through the induction of PNC1 expression. Pnc1, therefore, positively regulates Sir2-mediated silencing and longevity by preventing the accumulation of intracellular NAM during times of stress. (+info)
BBE02 disruption mutants of Borrelia burgdorferi B31 have a highly transformable, infectious phenotype.
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We constructed highly transformable and infectious Borrelia burgdorferi B31 by inactivating BBE02, a putative restriction-modification gene on the linear plasmid lp25. The low-passage-number B31 clones 5A4 (containing all plasmids) and 5A18 (lp28-4(-) lp56(-)) were used for this study, and BBE02 was disrupted by homologous recombination. The transformation efficiency with the shuttle vector pBSV2C03::gntDeltakan was increased from <1 to approximately 10 colonies per mug of DNA for 5A4 and 5A4 BBE02::Kan(r) and from 14 to approximately 600 colonies per mug of DNA for 5A18 and 5A18 BBE02::Kan(r). lp25, which is required for infectivity in mice, was retained in BBE02 mutants transformed with pBSV2C03::gntDeltakan, but lp25 was not detected in transformants of the parental clones 5A4 and 5A18. BBE02 disruptants and pBSV2C03::gntDeltakan transformants of these clones remained infectious in C3H/HeN mice, and the 50% infective doses of the BBE02 disruptants were <10(2) organisms per mouse. The inactivation of BBE02 thus eliminates a transformation barrier for infectious B. burgdorferi B31 and will provide a valuable tool for studying the virulence factors of Lyme disease. (+info)
Chemical activation of Sir2-dependent silencing by relief of nicotinamide inhibition.
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Sir2 is a nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+)-dependent protein deacetylase involved in gene silencing and longevity. Cellular stresses affect Sir2 activity, but the mechanisms of Sir2 regulation are debated. Nicotinamide has been proposed as a physiological regulator that inhibits Sir2 deacetylase activity by chemical reversal of a covalent reaction intermediate. We demonstrate a chemical strategy to activate Sir2-dependent transcriptional silencing and present evidence that the endogenous level of nicotinamide limits Sir2 activity in wild-type (wt) yeast cells. Nicotinamide inhibition of Sir2 is antagonized in vitro by isonicotinamide, which causes an increase in Sir2 deacetylation activity. Isonicotinamide also substantially increases transcriptional silencing at Sir2-regulated loci in wt strains and in strains lacking key NAD+ salvage pathway enzymes (PNC1 and NPT1). Thus, a nicotinamide antagonist is a Sir2 agonist in vitro and in vivo. (+info)
Crystal structure of the yeast nicotinamidase Pnc1p.
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The yeast nicotinamidase Pnc1p acts in transcriptional silencing by reducing levels of nicotinamide, an inhibitor of the histone deacetylase Sir2p. The Pnc1p structure was determined at 2.9A resolution using MAD and MIRAS phasing methods after inadvertent crystallization during the pursuit of the structure of histidine-tagged yeast isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH). Pnc1p displays a cluster of surface histidine residues likely responsible for its co-fractionation with IDH from Ni(2+)-coupled chromatography resins. Researchers expressing histidine-tagged proteins in yeast should be aware of the propensity of Pnc1p to crystallize, even when overwhelmed in concentration by the protein of interest. The protein assembles into extended helical arrays interwoven to form an unusually robust, yet porous superstructure. Comparison of the Pnc1p structure with those of three homologous bacterial proteins reveals a common core fold punctuated by amino acid insertions unique to each protein. These insertions mediate the self-interactions that define the distinct higher order oligomeric states attained by these molecules. Pnc1p also acts on pyrazinamide, a substrate analog converted by the nicotinamidase from Mycobacterium tuberculosis into a product toxic to that organism. However, we find no evidence for detrimental effects of the drug on yeast cell growth. (+info)