Immobilization of arginase and its application in an enzymatic chromatographic column: Thermodynamic studies of nor-NOHA/arginase binding and role of the reactive histidine residue

A biochromatographic approach is developed to measure for the first time changes in enthalpy, heat capacity change and protonation for the binding of nor-NOHA to arginase in a wide temperature range. For this, the arginase enzyme was immobilized on a chromatographic support. It was established that this novel arginase column was stable during an extended period of time. The affinity of nor-NOHA to arginase is high and changes slightly with the pH, because the number of protons linked to binding is low. The determination of the enthalpy change at different pH values suggested that the protonated group in the nor-NOHA–arginase complex exhibits a heat protonation of approximately −33 kJ/mol. This value agrees with the protonation of an imidazole group. Our result confirmed that active-site residue Hist 141 is protonated as imidazolium cation. Hist 141 can function as a general acid to protonate the leaving amino group of l-ornithine during catalysis. The thermodynamic data showed that nor-NOHA–arginase binding, for low temperature (<15 °C), is enthalpically unfavourable and being dominated by a positive entropy change. This result suggests that dehydration at the binding interface and charge–charge interactions contribute to the nor-NOHA–arginase complex formation. The temperature dependence of the free energy of binding is weak because of the enthalpy–entropy compensation caused by a large heat capacity change, ΔCp = −2.43 kJ/mol/K, of arginase. Above 15 °C, the thermodynamic data ΔH and ΔS became negative due to van der Waals interactions and hydrogen bonding which are engaged at the complex interface confirming strong enzyme–inhibitor hydrogen bond networks. As well, by the use of these thermodynamic data and known correlations it was clearly demonstrated that the binding of nor-NOHA to arginase produces slight conformational changes in the vicinity of the active site. Our work indicated that our biochromatographic approach could soon become very attractive for studying other enzyme–ligand binding.