Department Environmental Chemistry

Extracellular enzymes are master recyclers of organic matter, and to predict their functional lifetime, we need to understand their environmental transformation processes. In surface waters, direct and indirect photochemical transformation is a known driver of inactivation. We investigated molecular changes that occur along with inactivation in aminopeptidase, an abundant class of extracellular enzymes. We studied the inactivation kinetics and localized oxidation caused by singlet oxygen, ¹O₂, a major photochemically derived oxidant toward amino acids. Aminopeptidase showed second-order inactivation rate constants with ¹O₂ comparable to those of free amino acids. We then visualized site-specific oxidation kinetics within the three-dimensional protein and demonstrated that fastest oxidation occurred around the active site and at other reactive amino acids. However, second-order oxidation rate constants did not correlate strictly with the ¹O₂-accessible surface areas of those amino acids. We inspected site-specific processes by a comprehensive suspect screening for 723,288 possible transformation products. We concluded that histidine involved in zinc coordination at the active site reacted slower than what was expected by its accessibility, and we differentiated between two competing reaction pathways of ¹O₂ with tryptophan residues. This systematic analysis can be directly applied to other proteins and transformation reactions.

Harmful cyanobacterial blooms in freshwater ecosystems produce bioactive secondary metabolites including cyanopeptides that pose ecological and human health risks. Only adverse effects of one class of cyanopeptides, microcystins, have been studied extensively and have consequently been included in water quality assessments. Inhibition is a commonly observed effect for enzymes exposed to cyanopeptides and has mostly been investigated for human biologically relevant model enzymes. Here, we investigated the inhibition of ubiquitous aquatic enzymes by cyanobacterial metabolites. Hydrolytic enzymes are utilized in the metabolism of aquatic organisms and extracellularly by heterotrophic bacteria to obtain assimilable substrates. The ubiquitous occurrence of hydrolytic enzymes leads to the co-occurrence with cyanopeptides especially during cyanobacterial blooms. Bacterial leucine aminopeptidase and alkaline phosphatase were exposed to cyanopeptide extracts of different cyanobacterial strains (Microcystis aeruginosa wild type and microcystin-free mutant, Planktothrix rubescens) and purified cyanopeptides. We observed inhibition of aminopeptidase and phosphatase upon exposure, especially to the apolar fractions of the cyanobacterial extracts. Exposure to the dominant cyanopeptides in these extracts confirmed that purified microcystins, aerucyclamide A and cyanopeptolin A inhibit the aminopeptidase in the low mg L^-1 range while the phosphatase was less affected. Inhibition of aquatic enzymes can reduce the turnover of nutrients and carbon substrates and may also impair metabolic functions of grazing organisms.

Extracellular enzymes are major drivers of biogeochemical nutrient and carbon cycling in surface water. While photoinactivation is regarded as a major inactivation process of these enzymes, the underlying molecular changes have received little attention. This study demonstrate how light exposure leads to a rapid loss of phosphatase, aminopeptidase and glucosidase activities of biofilm samples and model enzymes. Here, an optimized proteomics approach allowed simultaneous observation of inactivation and molecular changes. Site-specific fingerprints of degradation kinetics have been generated and visualized in the three-dimensional proteins. Oxidation of tryptophan, the chromophoric target, initiated secondary reactions. Evidence was obtained that tyrosine residues act as intramolecular antioxidants, reflected in decelerated decay of tryptophan- and enhanced decay of tyrosine-containing peptides. In addition, subsequent methionine oxidation and disulfide reduction contribute to heterogeneous photodamage. The proximity to tryptophan residues explains >95% of the photodamage across the protein structures. The presence of redox-active organic matter or a model antioxidant in solution quenched not only photoinactivation and tryptophan oxidation but also all subsequent damage. The developed analytical approach can be applied to other research questions in environmental sciences where site-specific damage in a protein is essential.