Fluorescence studies on lipoamide dehydrogenases of pig heart. I. Conformational dynamics of enzyme

The dynamic structures of two major forms (LD(I) and LD(II) of pig heart lipoamide dehydrogenase, resolved by TEAE-cellulose column chromatography, were studied by fluorescence depolarization. FAD and ANM were used as an intrinsic and an extrinsic fluorescent probe, respectively. In the experiments with bound FAD of lipoamide dehydrogenase, no thermal dependence of the fluorescence depolarization of either enzyme was observed and the values of polarization were close to the theoretical maximum value of 0.5. Both enzymes contained two reactive thiol groups which differed in their reactivities toward ANM. When the enzymes were labeled with one mol of ANM per mol of enzyme, the rotational relaxation times of LD(I) and LD(II) were found to be 18 ns and 196 ns, respectively. These findings indicate that the sement of LD(I) labeled with ANM fluctuates in the order of nanoseconds, whereas this segment of LD(II) is fixed rigidly. On the other hand, when the enzymes were labeled with two mol of ANM per mol of enzyme, both enzymes showed the composite result of fluorescence depolarization due to the motilities of the segment of enzyme and the whole enzyme molecule. These findings indicate that both LD(I) and LD(II) have the non-equivalent motilities of segments containing one reactive thiol group between the two monomers. In other words, the segment containing the ANM binding site of the one monomer is flexible and this segment of the other monomer is fixed rigidly in both enzymes.