Structural Coupling Throughout the Active Site Hydrogen Bond Networks of Ketosteroid Isomerase and Photoactive Yellow Protein

Hydrogen bonds are fundamental to biological systems and are regularly found in networks implicated in folding, molecular recognition, catalysis, and allostery. Given their ubiquity, we asked the fundamental questions of whether, and to what extent, hydrogen bonds within networks are structurally coupled. To address these questions, we turned to three protein systems, two variants of ketosteroid isomerase and one of photoactive yellow protein. We perturbed their hydrogen bond networks via a combination of site-directed mutagenesis and unnatural amino acid substitution, and we used 1H NMR and high-resolution X-ray crystallography to determine the effects of these perturbations on the lengths of the two oxyanion hole hydrogen bonds that are donated to negatively charged transition state analogs. Perturbations that lengthened or shortened one of the oxyanion hole hydrogen bonds had the opposite effect on the other. The oxyanion hole hydrogen bonds were also affected by distal hydrogen bonds in the network, w...