Engineering the N-Terminal Sequence of Glycine max Soybean Formate Dehydrogenase

NAD(P)⁺-dependent formate dehydrogenase (FDH, EC 1.2.1.2.) catalyzes the oxidation of formate ion with the coupled reduction of NAD(P)⁺ to NAD(P)H. Previously, in our laboratory, a genetic construct was obtained with the soyfdh2 gene encoding isoenzyme 2 of formate dehydrogenase from soybean Glycine max (SoyFDH). In this construct the nucleotide sequence encoding the signal peptide responsible for the transport of the pro-enzyme into the mitochondria of plant cells (the SoyFDH_L enzyme) was deleted. In this work, a second variant of SoyFDH_S was obtained, in which, compared to SoyFDH_L, the sequence at the N-terminus was reduced and changed to mimic the N-terminus sequence in FDH from Pseudomonas sp.101 bacterium. Next, a sequence of six histidine residues (His-tag) was added to the N-terminus of the long and short forms of SoyFDH. All four SoyFDH variants were expressed in E. coli BL21(DE3)CodonPlus cells. These enzymes were purified, their kinetic parameters were determined, and thermal stability was studied. In the case of SoyFDH_L, which is similar to the natural form of the enzyme, both variants, with and without His-tag, the expression level is two times higher compared to the truncated variant. The addition of His-tag to the N-terminus of enzymes reduces the level of expression. Changing the sequence of the N-terminus, as well as introducing the His-tag sequence to the N-terminus, does not significantly affect thermal stability of the enzymes at temperatures of 50–56°C. However, due to the higher values of the activation enthalpy ΔH^≠ of the thermal inactivation process, the shortened form at normal temperatures is 3 times more stable than the natural one. A comparison of the kinetic parameters of the two SoyFDH variants shows that the catalytic constants are the same, but the long version SoyFDH_L has lower values \(K_{{\text{M}}}^{{{\text{HCOO}} - }}\), and the short version SoyFDH_S has lower \(K_{{\text{M}}}^{{{\text{NAD + }}}}\) values. The introduction of His-tag into the N-terminus of enzymes does not affect their kinetic parameters.