Institute for Organic Chemistry, University of Karlsruhe, Germany; 2Institute for Organic Chemistry, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary Elucidation of the 3D structure of histidine ammonia-lyase (HAL, EC ) from Pseudomonas putida by X-ray crystallography revealed that the electrophilic prosthetic group at the active site is 3,5-dihydro-5-methylidene-4H-i´ midazol-4-one (MIO) [Schwede, ., Retey, J., Schulz, . (1999) Biochemistry, 38, 5355 –5361]. To evaluate the importance of several amino-acid residues at the active site for substrate binding and catalysis, we mutated the following amino-acid codons in the HAL gene: R283, Y53, Y280, E414, Q277, F329, N195 and H83. Kinetic measurements with the.
