Cloning, crystallization and preliminary characterization of a β-carbonic anhydrase from Escherichia coli

Carbonic anhydrases are zinc metalloenzymes that fall into three distinct evolutionary and structural classes, α, β and γ. Although α-­class enzymes, particularly mammalian carbonic anhydrase II, have been the subject of extensive structural studies, for the β class, consisting of a wide variety of prokaryotic and plant chloroplast carbonic anhydrases, the structural data is quite limited. A member of the β class from E. coli (CynT2) has been crystallized in native and selenomethionine-labelled forms and multiwavelength anomalous dispersion techniques have been applied in order to determine the positions of anomalous scatterers. The resulting phase information is sufficient to produce an interpretable electron-density map. A crystal structure for CynT2 would contribute significantly to the emerging structural knowledge of a biologically important class of enzymes that perform critical functions in carbon fixation and prokaryotic metabolism.