NMR investigations of nitrophorin 2 belt side chain effects on heme orientation and seating of native N-terminus NP2 and NP2(D1A).

Nitrophorin 2, one of the four NO–storing and –releasing proteins found in the saliva of the blood-sucking bug Rhodnius prolixus, has a more ruffled heme and a high preference for a particular heme orientation (B), compared to those of NP1 and NP4, which show no preference (A:B ~ 1:1), suggesting that it fits more tightly in the β-barrel protein. In this work we have prepared a series of “Belt” mutants of NP2(D1A) and (ΔM0)NP2 aimed at reducing the size of aromatic or other residues that surround the heme, and investigated them as the high-spin aqua and low-spin N-methylimidazole (NMeIm) complexes. The “Belt” mutants included Y38A, Y38F, F42A, F66A, Y85A, Y85F, Y104A, I120T and a triple mutant of NP2(D1A), the F42L,L106F,I120T mutant. Although I120 has been mainly considered to be a distal pocket residue, the CδH3 of I120 lies directly above the heme 3-methyl, at 2.67 A, of heme orientation B, or 2-vinyl of A, and it thus plays a role as a “Belt” mutant, a role that turns out to be extremely important in creating the strong favoring of the B heme orientation (A:B = 1:14) for NP2(D1A) or 1:12 for (ΔM0)NP2. The results show that the 1D 1H NMR spectra of the high-spin forms are quite sensitive to changes in the shape of the heme binding cavity. The single mutation I120T eliminates the favorability of the B heme orientation by producing a heme A:B orientation of 1:1, while the single mutation F42A reverses the heme orientation from A:B = 1:14 seen for NP2(D1A) to 10:1 for NP2(D1A,F42A). The most extreme ratio was found for the triple mutant of NP2(D1A), NP2(D1A,F42L,L105F,I120T), in which A:B ~25:1, a ΔG change of about −3.5 kcal/mol or −14.1 kJ/mol with respect to NP2(D1A). The seating of the heme is modified as well in that mutant and several others, by rotations of the heme by up to 4° from the seating observed in NP2(D1A), in order to relieve steric interactions between a vinyl β-carbon and a protein side chain, or to fill a cavity created by replacing a large protein side chain by a much smaller one; the latter was observed for all Tyr→Ala mutants. These relatively small changes in seating have measureable effect on the NMR spectra of the mutants, but are indeed minor in terms of overall seating and reactivity of the NP2(D1A) protein. The 1H NMR resonances of the hemin substituents of the low-spin NMeIm complexes of NP2(D1A,F42L,L105F,I120T) as well as NP2(D1A,I120T), NP2(D1A,Y104A) and NP2(D1A,F42A) have been assigned using natural abundance 1H{13C} HMQC and 1H-1H NOESY spectra.