Structure-function analysis for the hydroxylation of Δ4 C21-steroids by the myxobacterial CYP260B1

A Novel Thermostable Cytochrome P450 from Sequence-Based Metagenomics of Binh Chau Hot Spring as a Promising Catalyst for Testosterone Conversion

Biotechnological applications of cytochromes P450 show difficulties, such as low activity, thermal and/or solvent instability, narrow substrate specificity and redox partner dependence. In an attempt to overcome these limitations, an exploitation of novel thermophilic P450 enzymes from nature via uncultured approaches is desirable due to their great advantages that can resolve nearly all mentioned impediments. From the metagenomics library of the Binh Chau hot spring, an open reading frame (ORF) encoding a thermostable cytochrome P450—designated as P450-T3—which shared 66.6% amino acid sequence identity with CYP109C2 of Sorangium cellulosum So ce56 was selected for further identification and characterization. The ORF was synthesized artificially and heterologously expressed in Escherichia coli C43(DE3) using the pET17b system. The purified enzyme had a molecular weight of approximately 43 kDa. The melting temperature of the purified enzyme was 76.2 °C and its apparent half-life at 60 °C was 38.7 min. Redox partner screening revealed that P450-T3 was reduced well by the mammalian AdR-Adx4-108 and the yeast Arh1-Etp1 redox partners. Lauric acid, palmitic acid, embelin, retinoic acid (all-trans) and retinoic acid (13-cis) demonstrated binding to P450-T3. Interestingly, P450-T3 also bound and converted testosterone. Overall, P450-T3 might become a good candidate for biocatalytic applications on a larger scale.

Bacterial cytochrome P450-catalyzed regio- and stereoselective steroid hydroxylation enabled by directed evolution and rational design

Steroids are the most widely marketed products by the pharmaceutical industry after antibiotics. Steroid hydroxylation is one of the most important functionalizations because their derivatives enable a higher biological activity compared to their less polar non-hydroxylated analogs. Bacterial cytochrome P450s constitute promising biocatalysts for steroid hydroxylation due to their high expression level in common workhorses like Escherichia coli. However, they often suffer from wrong or insufficient regio- and/or stereoselectivity, low activity, narrow substrate range as well as insufficient thermostability, which hampers their industrial application. Fortunately, these problems can be generally solved by protein engineering based on directed evolution and rational design. In this work, an overview of recent developments on the engineering of bacterial cytochrome P450s for steroid hydroxylation is presented.

Distinct Regioselectivity of Fungal P450 Enzymes for Steroidal Hydroxylation

In this study, we identified two P450 enzymes (CYP5150AP3 and CYP5150AN1) from Thanatephorus cucumeris NBRC 6298 by combination of transcriptome sequencing and heterologous expression in Pichia pastoris The biotransformation of 11-deoxycortisol and testosterone by Pichia pastoris whole cells coexpressing the cyp5150ap3 and por genes demonstrated that the CYP5150AP3 enzyme possessed steroidal 7β-hydroxylase activities toward these substrates, and the regioselectivity was dependent on the structures of steroidal compounds. CYP5150AN1 catalyzed the 2β-hydroxylation of 11-deoxycortisol. It is interesting that they display different regioselectivity of hydroxylation from that of their isoenzyme, CYP5150AP2, which possesses 19- and 11β-hydroxylase activities.IMPORTANCE The steroidal hydroxylases CYP5150AP3 and CYP5150AN1 together with the previously characterized CYP5150AP2 belong to the CYP5150A family of P450 enzymes with high amino acid sequence identity, but they showed completely different regioselectivities toward 11-deoxycortisol, suggesting the regioselectivity diversity of steroidal hydroxylases of CYP5150 family. They are also distinct from the known bacterial and fungal steroidal hydroxylases in substrate specificity and regioselectivity. Biocatalytic hydroxylation is one of the important transformations for the functionalization of steroid nucleus rings but remains a very challenging task in organic synthesis. These hydroxylases are useful additions to the toolbox of hydroxylase enzymes for the functionalization of steroids at various positions.

Sesquiterpenoids Produced by Combining Two Sesquiterpene Cyclases with Promiscuous Myxobacterial CYP260B1

Sesquiterpenes represent a class of important terpenoids with high structural diversity and a wide range of applications. The cyclized core skeletons are generated by sesquiterpene cyclases, and the structural diversity is further increased by a series of modification steps. Cytochromes P450 (P450s) are a class of monooxygenases and one of the main contributors to the structural diversity of natural products. Some of these P450s show a broad substrate range and might be promising candidates for the implementation of cascade reactions. In this study, a combinatorial biosynthesis approach was utilized by the combination of a promiscuous myxobacterial P450 (CYP260B1) with two sesquiterpene cyclases (FgJ01056, FgJ09920) of filamentous fungi. Two oxygenated products, culmorin and culmorone, and a new compound, koraidiol, were successfully generated and characterized. This approach suggests the potential use of noncognate P450s to produce novel oxygenated terpenoids, or to generate a novel biosynthetic route for known terpenoids by a combinatorial biosynthesis strategy.

Effects of Alternative Redox Partners and Oxidizing Agents on CYP154C8 Catalytic Activity and Product Distribution

CYP154C8 catalyzes the hydroxylation of diverse steroids, as has previously been demonstrated, by using an NADH-dependent system including putidaredoxin and putidaredoxin reductase as redox partner proteins carrying electrons from NADH. In other reactions, CYP154C8 reconstituted with spinach ferredoxin and NADPH-dependent ferredoxin reductase displayed catalytic activity different from that of the NADH-dependent system. The NADPH-dependent system showed multistep oxidation of progesterone and other substrates including androstenedione, testosterone, and nandrolone. (Diacetoxyiodo)benzene was employed to generate compound I (FeO³⁺ ), actively supporting the redox reactions catalyzed by CYP154C8. In addition to 16α-hydroxylation, progesterone and 11-oxoprogesterone also underwent hydroxylation at the 6β-position in reactions supported by (diacetoxyiodo)benzene. CYP154C8 was active in the presence of high concentrations (>10 mm) of H₂ O₂ , with optimum conversion surprisingly being achieved at ≈75 mm H₂ O₂ . More importantly, H₂ O₂ tolerance by CYP154C8 was evident in the very low heme oxidation rate constant (K) even at high concentrations of H₂ O₂ . Our results demonstrate that alternative redox partners and oxidizing agents influence the catalytic efficiency and product distribution of a cytochrome P450 enzyme. More importantly, these choices affected the type and selectivity of reaction catalyzed by the P450 enzyme.

Bacterial steroid hydroxylases: enzyme classes, their functions and comparison of their catalytic mechanisms

The steroid superfamily includes a wide range of compounds that are essential for living organisms of the animal and plant kingdoms. Structural modifications of steroids highly affect their biological activity. In this review, we focus on hydroxylation of steroids by bacterial hydroxylases, which take part in steroid catabolic pathways and play an important role in steroid degradation. We compare three distinct classes of metalloenzymes responsible for aerobic or anaerobic hydroxylation of steroids, namely: cytochrome P450, Rieske-type monooxygenase 3-ketosteroid 9α-hydroxylase, and molybdenum-containing steroid C25 dehydrogenases. We analyze the available literature data on reactivity, regioselectivity, and potential application of these enzymes in organic synthesis of hydroxysteroids. Moreover, we describe mechanistic hypotheses proposed for all three classes of enzymes along with experimental and theoretical evidences, which have provided grounds for their formulation. In case of the 3-ketosteroid 9α-hydroxylase, such a mechanistic hypothesis is formulated for the first time in the literature based on studies conducted for other Rieske monooxygenases. Finally, we provide comparative analysis of similarities and differences in the reaction mechanisms utilized by bacterial steroid hydroxylases.

Structure-Based Engineering of Steroidogenic CYP260A1 for Stereo- and Regioselective Hydroxylation of Progesterone

The production of regio- and stereoselectively hydroxylated steroids is of high pharmaceutical interest and can be achieved by cytochrome P450-based biocatalysts. CYP260A1 from Sorangium cellulosum strain So ce56 catalyzes hydroxylation of C19 or C21 steroids at the very unique 1α-position. However, the conversion of progesterone (PROG) by CYP260A1 is very unselective. In order to improve its selectivity we applied a semirational protein engineering approach, resulting in two different, highly regio- and stereoselective mutants by replacing a single serine residue (S276) of the substrate recognition site 5 with an asparagine or isoleucine. The S276N mutant converted PROG predominantly into 1α-hydroxy-PROG, while the S276I mutant led to 17α-hydroxy-PROG. We solved the high-resolution crystal structures of the PROG-bound S276N and S276I mutants, which revealed two different binding modes of PROG in the active site. The orientations were consistent with the exclusive 1α- (pro-1α binding mode) and 17α-hydroxylation (pro-17α-binding mode) of S276N and S276I, respectively. We observed that water-mediated hydrogen bonds contribute to the stabilization of the polar C3 and C17 substituents of PROG. Both binding modes of PROG may be stabilized in the wild-type enzyme. The change in regioselectivity is mainly driven by destabilizing the alternative binding mode due to steric hindrance and hydrogen bond disruption, caused by the mutations of Ser276. Thus, for the first time, the change in the selectivity of cytochrome P450-mediated steroid hydroxylation created by rational mutagenesis can be explained by the obtained 3D structures of the substrate-bound mutants, providing the basis for further experiments to engineer the biocatalyst toward novel steroid hydroxylation positions.

CYP260B1 acts as 9α-hydroxylase for 11-deoxycorticosterone

Steroids and their oxyfunctionalized counterparts are valuable compounds for the pharmaceutical industry; however, the regio- and stereoselective introduction of oxygen is a challenging task for the synthetic chemistry. Thus, cytochromes P450 play an important role for the functionalization of steroidal compounds. In this study, we elucidated the main product of 11-deoxycorticosterone conversion formed by CYP260B1 from Sorangium cellulosum So ce56 as 9α-OH 11-deoxycorticosterone by NMR spectroscopy. This is, to the best of our knowledge, the first identification of a 9α-hydroxylase for this substrate. In addition, the major side product was identified as 21-OH pregna-1,4-diene-3,20-dione. Studies using 1α-OH 11-deoxycorticosterone as substrate suggested that the major side product is formed via dehydrogenation reaction. This side reaction was considerably decreased by employing the CYP260B1-T224A mutant, which showed an increased selectivity of about 75% compared to the 60% of the wild type for the 9α-hydroxylation. To scale up the production, an E. coli based whole-cell system harboring the CYP260B1-T224A variant as well as two heterologous redox partners was used. Employing growing cells in minimal medium led to a productivity of about 0.25g/l/d at a 50ml scale showing the biotechnological potential of this system.

Investigating the effect of available redox protein ratios for the conversion of a steroid by a myxobacterial CYP260A1

Since cytochromes P450 are external monooxygenases, available surrogate redox partners have been used to reconstitute the P450 activity. However, the effect of various ratios of P450s and the redox proteins have not been extensively studied so far, although different combinations of the redox partners have shown variations in substrate conversion. To address this issue, CYP260A1 was reconstituted with various ratios of adrenodoxin and adrenodoxin reductase to convert 11-deoxycorticosterone, and the products were characterized by NMR. We show the effect of the available redox protein ratios not only on the P450 catalytic activity but also on the product pattern.