Replacement of Lys-300 with a glutamine in the NhaA Na/H antiporter of Escherichia coli yields a functional electrogenic transporter

Abstract

Much of the research on Na/H exchange has been done in prokaryotic models, mainly on the NhaA Na/H-exchanger from Escherichia coli (EcNhaA). Two conserved aspartate residues, Asp-163 and Asp-164, are essential for transport and are candidates for possible binding sites for the two H that are exchanged for one Na to make the overall transport process electrogenic. More recently, a proposed mechanism of transport for EcNhaA has suggested direct binding of one of the transported H to the conserved Lys-300 residue, a salt bridge partner of Asp-163. This contention is supported by a study reporting that substitution of the equivalent residue, Lys-305, of a related Na/H antiporter, NapA from Thermus thermophilus, renders the transporter electroneutral. In this work, we sought to establish whether the Lys-300 residue and its partner Asp-163 are essential for the electrogenicity of EcNhaA. To that end, we replaced Lys-300 with Gln, either alone or together with the simultaneous substitution of Asp-163 with Asn, and characterized these transporter variants in electrophysiological experiments combined with H transport measurements and stability analysis. We found that K300Q EcNhaA can still support electrogenic Na/H antiport in EcNhaA, but has reduced thermal stability. A parallel electrophysiological investigation of the K305Q variant of TtNapA revealed that it is also electrogenic. Furthermore, replacement of both salt bridge partners in the ion-binding site of EcNhaA produced an electrogenic variant (D163N/ K300Q). Our findings indicate that alternative mechanisms sustain EcNhaA activity in the absence of canonical ion-binding residues and that the conserved lysines confer structural stability.