In Rhodospirillum rubrum, the maturation of carbon monoxide dehydrogenase (CODH) requires three nickel chaperones, namely RrCooC, RrCooT and RrCooJ. Recently, the biophysical characterisation of the RrCooT homodimer and the X-ray structure of its apo form revealed the existence of a solvent-exposed NiII -binding site at the dimer interface, involving the strictly conserved Cys2. Here, a multifaceted approach that used NMR and X-ray absorption spectroscopies, complemented with structural bio-modelling methodologies, was used to characterise the binding mode of NiII in RrCooT. This study suggests that NiII adopts a square-planar geometry through a N2 S2 coordinating environment that comprises the two thiolate and amidate groups of both Cys2 residues at the dimer interface. The existence of a diamagnetic mononuclear NiII centre with bis-amidate/bis-thiolate ligands, coordinated by a single-cysteine motif, is unprecedented in biology and raises the question of its role in the activation of CODH at the molecular level.
Keywords: CooT; carbon monoxide dehydrogenases; chaperone protein; enzymes; nickel; nickel-binding cysteine.
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