Molybdenum center of xanthine dehydrogenase

Cyanolysis of native, oxidized xanthine dehydrogenase is known to inactivate the enzyme by removing a unique sulfur as thiocyanate. Chemical, genetic, and spectroscopic evidence indicates that this sulfur is a terminal ligand of Mo and is present in native xanthine dehydrogenase, but not in cyanolyzed xanthine dehydrogenase or native sulfite oxidase. A procedure for rapid, reproducible, and quantitative reconstitution of desulfo Mo hydroxylases with sulfide was developed. The cyanolyzable sulfur of xanthine dehydrogenase was specifically radiolabeled with 35sulfide using this procedure. Various chemical properties of the cyanolyzable sulfur could be determined with the radiolabelled enzyme. The data support the conclusion that the cyanolyzable sulfur is a terminal sulfur ligand of the Mo atoms, and is not part of an organic moiety. Application of the resulfuration procedure to crude extracts of Drosophila melanogaster ma-1 flies, which are pleiotropically deficient in xanthine dehydrogenase and aldehyde oxidase, led to the emergence of these enzyme activities. Evidence for the identity of in vitro reconstituted xanthine dehydrogenase from ma-1 mutants with wild type enzyme is presented. A system for efficient reconstitution of the apo-subunits of the molybdoenzyme nitrate reductase from the Neurospora crassa mutant nit-1 with molybdenum cofactor from denatured purified molybdoenzymes in the absence of exogenous molybdate was developed