Preliminary crystallographic analysis of an extremely thermostable glutamate dehydrogenase from the archaeon...

The extremely heat-stable glutamate dehydrogenase (GluDH) from Pyrococcus woesei was crystallized by the hanging-drop vapour-diffusion method. Crystals suitable for X-ray crystallographic investigations were obtained using polyethylene glycol (PEG) 4000 and ammonium acetate as precipitating agents. The crystals obtained diffract to a resolution of 2.8 A, have a prismatic shape and grow up to 0.5 mm in their maximal dimension. They belong to the triclinic system (space group P1; a = 90.9, b = 92.8, c = 107.1 A, alpha = 69.1, beta = 80.7, Vgamma = 65.0 degrees ) with a unit-cell volume of 765052 A(3) which accommodates one GluDH hexamer of 276 kDa. The averaged density of the crystal determined by Ficoll-gradient centrifugation is 1.15 g cm(-3), which corresponds to a molecular mass of 255 kDa in the unit cell. A native data set has been collected on an MAR image-plate system using Cu Kalpha radiation. The completeness of the data set in the range 316-3 A is 74%, and contains 64% of the data in the outer shell (3.4-2.8 A), with an average R(merge) value of 9%. Calculation of self-rotation functions revealed the 32 symmetry of the hexamer; 3 non-crystallographic twofold axes were found at a distance of 120 degrees in a plane perpendicular to the non-crystallographic threefold axis.