Prediction of substrate specificity and preliminary kinetic characterization of the hypothetical protein PVX_123945 from Plasmodium vivax

• PVX_123945 was predicted to be a phosphatase using various in silico analyses.
• Kinetics validated prediction, showed specificity for β-glycerophosphate and pyridoxal 5′-phosphate.
• First attempt at biochemical characterization of a hypothetical HAD superfamily member from P. vivax.

Members of the haloacid dehalogenase (HAD) superfamily are emerging as an important group of enzymes by virtue of their role in diverse chemical reactions. In different Plasmodium species their number varies from 16 to 21. One of the HAD superfamily members, PVX_123945, a hypothetical protein from Plasmodium vivax, was selected for examining its substrate specificity. Based on distant homology searches and structure comparisons, it was predicted to be a phosphatase. Thirty-eight metabolites were screened to identify potential substrates. Further, to validate the prediction, biochemical and kinetic studies were carried out that showed that the protein was a monomer with high catalytic efficiency for β-glycerophosphate followed by pyridoxal 5′-phosphate. The enzyme also exhibited moderate catalytic efficiencies for α-glycerophosphate, xanthosine 5′-monophosphate and adenosine 5′-monophosphate. It also hydrolyzed the artificial substrate p-nitrophenyl phosphate (pNPP). Mg2+ was the most preferred divalent cation and phosphate inhibited the enzyme activity. The study is the first attempt at understanding the substrate specificity of a hypothetical protein belonging to HAD superfamily from the malarial parasite P. vivax.

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