Effects of chemical modification of lysine residues in trypsin

Chemical modifications are a simple method to identify and modify functional determinants of enzymes. In the case of serine proteases, it is possible to induce characteristics which are advantageous for peptide synthesis. In this work, we investigated the influence of guanylation and succinylation of lysine residues on the S'-subsite specificity, the catalytic behavior and stability of trypsin. We have found, that succinylation leads to an about 10-fold better acceptance of basic residues in P1', whereas guanylation shows no remarkable effects. Furthermore, guanylation enhances, succinylation reduces the general enzyme-substrate interactions in P2'. The structural fundamentals of these specificity changes are discussed. The catalytic behavior of trypsin was not influenced by guanylation and succinylation but an enhancement of the stability against autolytic processes by introducing additional negative charges into the protein was observed. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.