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Butelase 1 is an Asx-specific ligase enabling peptide macrocyclization and synthesis

Nature Chemical Biology volume 10, pages 732–738 (2014)Cite this article

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Abstract

Proteases are ubiquitous in nature, whereas naturally occurring peptide ligases, enzymes catalyzing the reverse reactions of proteases, are rare occurrences. Here we describe the discovery of butelase 1, to our knowledge the first asparagine/aspartate (Asx) peptide ligase to be reported. This highly efficient enzyme was isolated from Clitoria ternatea, a cyclic peptide–producing medicinal plant. Butelase 1 shares 71% sequence identity and the same catalytic triad with legumain proteases but does not hydrolyze the protease substrate of legumain. Instead, butelase 1 cyclizes various peptides of plant and animal origin with yields greater than 95%. With Kcat values of up to 17 s−1 and catalytic efficiencies as high as 542,000 M−1 s−1, butelase 1 is the fastest peptide ligase known. Notably, butelase 1 also displays broad specificity for the N-terminal amino acids of the peptide substrate, thus providing a new tool for C terminus–specific intermolecular peptide ligations.

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Figure 1: MS characterization of peptide cyclase activity.
Figure 2: Isolation, characterization and homology modeling of butelase 1.
Figure 3: Kinetic characterization of butelase 1 as a peptide cyclase.
Figure 4: Cyclodimer formation of kB1.
Figure 5: Acceptor specificity of butelase-mediated peptide ligation.

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Acknowledgements

We thank M. Bogyo at Stanford University for providing the legumain-specific probe LP-1 and R. Wang at Nanyang Technological University for helpful comments on this manuscript. This work was supported in part by the Singapore National Research Foundation grant NRF-CRP8-2011-05.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Biological Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

    Giang K T Nguyen, Shujing Wang, Yibo Qiu, Xinya Hemu, Yilong Lian & James P Tam

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Contributions

G.K.T.N. designed the experiments and isolated and characterized butelase 1. S.W. performed the 1D NMR and homology modeling of butelase 1. Y.Q. synthesized the peptide libraries. X.H. evaluated the intermolecular ligation efficiency. Y.L. performed the kinetic studies for conotoxin, thanatin and histatin. J.P.T. initiated, planned, supervised and edited the manuscript.

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Correspondence to James P Tam.

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Supplementary Results, Supplementary Tables 1–3, Supplementary Figures 1–15 and Supplementary Note 1. (PDF 6225 kb)

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Nguyen, G., Wang, S., Qiu, Y. et al. Butelase 1 is an Asx-specific ligase enabling peptide macrocyclization and synthesis. Nat Chem Biol 10, 732–738 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchembio.1586

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