Acta Crystallographica Section D

Biological Crystallography

Volume 60, Part 11 (November 2004)


research papers



Acta Cryst. (2004). D60, 1929-1934    [ doi:10.1107/S0907444904020645 ]

Structure of human erythrocyte NADH-cytochrome b5 reductase

S. Bando, T. Takano, T. Yubisui, K. Shirabe, M. Takeshita and A. Nakagawa

Abstract: Erythrocyte NADH-cytochrome b5 reductase reduces methaemoglobin to functional haemoglobin. In order to examine the function of the enzyme, the structure of NADH-cytochrome b5 reductase from human erythrocytes has been determined and refined by X-ray crystallography. At 1.75 Å resolution, the root-mean-square deviations (r.m.s.d.) from standard bond lengths and angles are 0.006 Å and 1.03°, respectively. The molecular structure was compared with those of rat NADH-cytochrome b5 reductase and corn nitrate reductase. The human reductase resembles the rat reductase in overall structure as well as in many side chains. Nevertheless, there is a large main-chain shift from the human reductase to the rat reductase or the corn reductase caused by a single-residue replacement from proline to threonine. A model of the complex between cytochrome b5 and the human reductase has been built and compared with that of the haem-containing domain of the nitrate reductase molecule. The interaction between cytochrome b5 and the human reductase differs from that of the nitrate reductase because of differences in the amino-acid sequences. The structures around 15 mutation sites of the human reductase have been examined for the influence of residue substitutions using the program ROTAMER. Five mutations in the FAD-binding domain seem to be related to cytochrome b5.

PDB reference: 1umk

Keywords: cytochrome b5; flavoproteins; reductases; NADH; FAD.

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