X-ray Crystallographic Analyses of Pig Pancreatic α-Amylase with Limit Dextrin Oligosaccharide and α-Cyclodextrin

摘要

Further refinement of the model using maximum likelihood procedures and re-evaluation of the native electron density map has shown that crystals of pig pancreatic α-amylase, whose structure we reported more than fifteen years ago, in fact contain a substantial amount of carbohydrate. The carbohydrate fragments are the products of glycogen digestion carried out as an essential step of the protein's purification procedure. In particular, the substrate-binding cleft contains a limit dextrin of six glucose residues, one of which contains both α-(1,4) and α-(1,6) linkages to contiguous residues. The disaccharide in the original model, shared between two amylase molecules in the crystal lattice, but also occupying a portion of the substrate binding cleft, is now seen to be a tetrasaccharide. There are, in addition, several other probable monosaccharide binding sites. To these results we have further reviewed our X-ray diffraction analysis of α-amylase complexed with α-cyclodextrin. α-Amylase binds three cyclodextrin molecules. Glucose residues of two of the rings superimpose upon the limit dextrin and the tetrasaccharide. The limit dextrin superimposes in large part upon linear oligosaccharide inhibitors visualized by other investigators. By comprehensive integration of these complexes we have constructed a model for the binding of polysaccharides having the helical character known to be present in natural substrates such as starch and glycogen.