Identification of Amino Acid Residues Essential for Onion Lachrymatory Factor Synthase Activity

Abstract

Lachrymatory factor synthase (LFS), an enzyme essential for the synthesis of the onion lachrymatory factor (propanethial S-oxide), was identified in 2002. This was the first reported enzyme involved in the production of thioaldehyde S-oxides via an intra-molecular H⁺ substitution reaction, and we therefore attempted to identify the catalytic amino acid residues of LFS as the first step in elucidating the unique catalytic reaction mechanism of this enzyme. A comparison of the LFS cDNA sequences among lachrymatory Allium plants, a deletion analysis and site-directed mutagenesis enabled us to identify two amino acids (Arg71 and Glu88) that were indispensable to the LFS activity. Homology modeling was performed for LFS/23–169 on the basis of the template structure of a pyrabactin resistance 1-like protein (PYL) which had been selected from a BLASTP search on SWISS-MODEL against LFS/23–169. We identified in the modeled structure of LFS a pocket corresponding to the ligand-binding site in PYL, and Arg71 and Glu88 were located in this pocket.

• Allium
• lachrymatory factor
• thioaldehyde S-oxides
• lachrymatory factor synthase
• homology modeling