Efficient catalysis of disulfide formation during protein folding with a single active-site cysteine

Protein disulfide isomerases (PDIs) catalyze disulfide bond formation during protein folding in vivo and are essential for viability in eukaryotic cells. They share the active-site sequence C-X-X-C that forms a catalytic disulfide. The recent finding that the EUG1 protein, a PDI-related yeast protein, with C-X-X-S sequence at its active sites can complement PDI-deficiency raised the general question of whether disulfide-isomerase activity is essential for cell viability or whether PDI variants with single active-site thiol groups can be catalytically active as disulfide isomerases. We investigated the function of the catalytic cysteine residues in DsbA, a PDI-related protein required for disulfide formation in the periplasmic space of Escherichia coli, by replacing C30 and C33 with alanine. While the mutant C30A and the double mutant CC30/33AA are inactive, C33A catalyzes disulfide-interchange reactions and oxidative renaturation of the reduced, unfolded thrombin inhibitor hirudin with close to wild-type efficiency. Thus, the single active-site thiol group of C30 is sufficient for disulfide-isomerase activity of the DsbA protein.