Lecithin retinol acyltransferase and its S175R mutant have a similar secondary structure content and maximum insertion pressure but different enzyme activities

Comparison between the enzymatic activity, structure and substrate binding of mouse and human lecithin retinol acyltransferase

Lecithin retinol acyltransferase (LRAT) is involved in the visual cycle where it catalyzes the formation of all-trans retinyl ester. The mouse animal model has been widely used to study LRAT. Primary sequence alignment shows 80% identity and 90% similarity between human and mouse LRAT. However, human LRAT has a proline at position 173 (hLRAT (P173)) while an arginine can be found at this position for the mouse protein (mLRAT (R173)). Moreover, residue 173 is important for the human protein since a substitution mutation of this residue to a leucine (P173L-hLRAT) caused night blindness in a patient. The present study was thus undertaken to determine whether mouse and human LRAT have a similar enzymatic activity, structure and substrate binding affinity using a truncated form of LRAT (tLRAT). The enzymatic activity and binding affinity to the substrate, all-trans retinol, of mtLRAT (R173) were found to be 2.7- and 3.9-fold lower, respectively, than that of htLRAT (P173). Moreover, the enzymatic activity of P173L-htLRAT is 6.3-fold lower compared to that of htLRAT (P173). Furthermore, a significant difference was observed between the intrinsic fluorescence emission as well as between the circular dichroism spectra of mtLRAT (R173) and htLRAT (P173). In addition, mtLRAT proteins are less thermostable than htLRAT proteins, which suggests that structural differences exist between the mouse and human proteins. Altogether, these data strongly suggest that the much lower catalytic activity of mtLRAT (R173) compared to that of htLRAT (P173) mostly results from differences between their structure, predominantly revealed by their dissimilar thermal stability, as well as their efficiency to bind all-trans retinol. Therefore, conclusions regarding the behavior of human LRAT based on measurements performed with mouse LRAT must be made with caution. Also, the much lower enzymatic activity of P173L-htLRAT compared to that of htLRAT (P173) might explain the night blindness of a patient carrying this mutation.

Binding of a truncated form of lecithin:retinol acyltransferase and its N- and C-terminal peptides to lipid monolayers

Lecithin:retinol acyltransferase (LRAT) is a 230 amino acid membrane-associated protein which catalyzes the esterification of all-trans-retinol into all-trans-retinyl ester. A truncated form of LRAT (tLRAT), which contains the residues required for catalysis but which is lacking the N- and C-terminal hydrophobic segments, was produced to study its membrane binding properties. Measurements of the maximum insertion pressure of tLRAT, which is higher than the estimated lateral pressure of membranes, and the positive synergy factor a argue in favor of a strong binding of tLRAT to phospholipid monolayers. Moreover, the binding, secondary structure and orientation of the peptides corresponding to its N- and C-terminal hydrophobic segments of LRAT have been studied by circular dichroism and polarization-modulation infrared reflection absorption spectroscopy in monolayers. The results show that these peptides spontaneously bind to lipid monolayers and adopt an α-helical secondary structure. On the basis of these data, a new membrane topology model of LRAT is proposed where its N- and C-terminal segments allow to anchor this protein to the lipid bilayer.