Hexokinase PII: structural analysis and glucose signalling in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Hexokinase PII (Hxk2) is a yeast glucose phosphorylating enzyme that, besides its role in glycolysis, seems to have an additional role in glucose signalling. To study the domains in Hxk2 that may participate in this latter process, we have constructed 11 mutant alleles using site-directed mutagenesis. Six of them were clustered charged-to-alanine mutants in which clusters of charged residues were changed to alanine residues. Two of them contained substitutions in Ser15 to either alanine or glutamic acid and three of them had deletions at either the N-terminus or the C-terminus of the protein. In most of them, the catalytic activity correlated directly with their functionality in glucose signalling. However, we found two mutants (Delta1-15 and Delta476-486) that, having low catalytic activity, were still fully functional in glucose signalling. This may indicate that other factors and not just the catalytic activity of the enzyme may be important for the functionality of the protein in glucose signalling.