Subcloning, expression, purification, and characterization of Haemophilus influenzae glycerol kinase

Glycerol kinase (EC 2.7.1.30) is a bacterial sugar kinase and a member of the sugar kinase/actin/hsc-70 superfamily of enzymes. The enzyme from Escherichia coli is an allosteric regulatory enzyme whose activity is inhibited by fructose 1,6-bisphosphate (FBP) and the glucose-specific phosphocarrier of the phosphoenolpyruvate:glycose phosphotransferase system, IIA(Glc) (previously termed III(Glc)). Comparison of its primary structure with that of the highly similar Haemophilus influenzae glycerol kinase reveals that the amino acid sequence for the binding site for FBP is conserved while the amino acid sequence for the binding site for IIA(Glc) contains differences that are predicted to prevent its inhibition. To test this hypothesis, the H. influenzae glpK gene was assembled from DNA library fragments and subcloned into pUC18. The enzyme is expressed at high levels in E. coli. It was purified to greater than 90% homogeneity by taking advantage of its solubility behavior in a procedure that requires no column chromatography. The initial-velocity kinetic parameters of the purified enzyme are similar to those of the E. coli glycerol kinase. The H. influenzae glycerol kinase is inhibited by FBP but not by IIA(Glc), in agreement with the prediction based on sequence comparison. Sedimentation velocity experiments reveal that inhibition of HiGK by FBP is associated with oligomerization, behavior which is similar to EcGK. The possibility of utilizing mutagenesis studies to exploit the high degree of similarity of these two enzymes to elucidate the mechanism of allosteric regulation by IIA(Glc) is discussed.