BACKGROUND:The major Dengue virus vector Aedes aegypti requires nutrients obtained from blood meal proteins to complete the gonotrophic cycle. Although bioinformatic analyses of Ae. aegypti midgut serine proteases have provided evolutionary insights, very little is known about the biochemical activity of these digestive enzymes.RESULTS:We used peptide specific antibodies to show that midgut serine proteases are expressed as zymogen precursors, which are cleaved to the mature form after blood feeding. Since midgut protein levels are insufficient to purify active proteases directly from blood fed mosquitoes, we engineered recombinant proteins encoding a heterologous enterokinase cleavage site to permit generation of the bona fide mature form of four midgut serine proteases (AaET, AaLT, AaSPVI, AaSPVII) for enzyme kinetic analysis. Cleavage of the chromogenic trypsin substrate BApNA showed that AaET has a catalytic efficiency (kcat/KM) that is ~30 times higher than bovine trypsin, and ~2-3 times higher than AaSPVI and AaSPVII, however, AaLT does not cleave BApNA. To measure the enzyme activities of the mosquito midgut proteases using natural substrates, we developed a quantitative cleavage assay based on cleavage of albumin and hemoglobin proteins. These studies revealed that the recombinant AaLT enzyme was indeed catalytically active, and cleaved albumin and hemoglobin with equivalent efficiency to that of AaET, AaSPVI, and AaSPVII. Structural modeling of the AaLT and AaSPVI mature forms indicated that AaLT is most similar to serine collagenases, whereas AaSPVI appears to be a classic trypsin.CONCLUSIONS:These data show that in vitro activation of recombinant serine proteases containing a heterologous enterokinase cleavage site can be used to investigate enzyme kinetics and substrate cleavage properties of biologically important mosquito proteases.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:arizona.edu/oai:arizona.openrepository.com:10150/610098 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Rascon, Alberto, Gearin, Johnathon, Isoe, Jun, Miesfeld, Roger |
| Contributors | Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, and Center for Insect Science West Room 518, 1041 E. Lowell St., University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, 85721, USA, Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, BioSciences West Room 518, 1041 E. Lowell St., University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, 85721, USA, Sandler Center for Drug Discovery, Byers Hall, 1700 4th Street N509, University of California at San Francisco, San Francisco, CA. 94143, USA |
| Publisher | BioMed Central |
| Source Sets | University of Arizona |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Article |
| Rights | © 2011 Rascón et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) |
| Relation | http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2091/12/43 |
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