Catapult mechanism renders the chaperone action of Hsp70 unidirectional

Molecular chaperones of the Hsp70 type promote the folding and membrane translocation of proteins. The interaction of Hsp70s with polypeptides is linked to ATP binding and hydrolysis. We formed complexes of seven different fluorescence-labeled peptides with DnaK, the Hsp70 homolog of Escherichia coli, and determined the rate of peptide release under two different sets of conditions. (1) Upon addition of ATP to nucleotide-free peptide.DnaK complexes, all tested peptides were released with similar rate constants (2.2 s-1 to 6.7 s-1). (2) In the binding equilibrium of peptide and ATP-liganded DnaK, the dissociation followed one or two-step reactions, depending on the amino acid sequence of the peptide. For the monophasic reactions, the dissociation rate constants diverged by four orders of magnitude from 0.0004 s-1 to 5.7 s-1; for the biphasic reactions, the rate constants of the second, slower isomerization step were in the range from 0.3 s-1 to 0.0005 s-1. The release of the different peptides in case (1) is 1.4 to 14,000 times faster than in case (2). Apparently, binding of ATP induces a transient state of the chaperone which ejects target peptides before the final state of ATP-liganded DnaK is reached. This "catapult" mechanism provides the chaperone cycle with a mode of peptide release that does not correspond with the reverse of peptide binding. By allowing the conformation of the outgoing polypeptide to differ from that of the incoming polypeptide, a futile cycle with respect to conformational work exerted on the target protein is obviated.