Identification of active site residues of Fenugreek β-amylase: Chemical modification and in silico approach

• Glutamic acid and cysteine recognized as active site residues from chemical modification.
• Glu187 and Glu381 were identified as probable acid–base pair involved in catalysis.
• Presence of Cys344 at active site was determined by sequence and structural alignment.

The amino acid sequence of Fenugreek β-amylase is not available in protein data bank. Therefore, an attempt has been made to identify the catalytic amino acid residues of enzyme by employing studies of pH dependence of enzyme catalysis, chemical modification and bioinformatics. Treatment of purified Fenugreek β-amylase with EDAC in presence of glycine methyl ester and sulfhydryl group specific reagents (IAA, NEM and p-CMB), followed a pseudo first-order kinetics and resulted in effective inactivation of enzyme. The reaction with EDAC in presence of NTEE (3-nitro-l-tyrosine ethylester) resulted into modification of two carboxyl groups per molecule of enzyme and presence of one accessible sulfhydryl group at the active site, per molecule of enzyme was ascertained by titration with DTNB. The above results were supported by the prevention of inactivation of enzyme in presence of substrate. Based on MALDI-TOF analysis of purified Fenugreek β-amylase and MASCOT search, β-amylase of Medicago sativa was found to be the best match. To further confirm the amino acid involved in catalysis, homology modelling of β-amylase of M. sativa was performed. The sequence alignment, superimposition of template and target models, along with study of interactions involved in docking of sucrose and maltose at the active site, led to identification of Glu187, Glu381 and Cys344 as active site residues.