A Key Glycine in Bacterial Steroid-Degrading Acyl-CoA Dehydrogenases Allows Flavin-Ring Repositioning and Modulates Substrate Side Chain Specificity
Bibliographic record
Abstract
A wide variety of steroid metabolites synthesized by eukaryotes are all ultimately catabolized by bacteria; while generally saprophytic, pathogenic Mycobacteria have repurposed these pathways to utilize host intracellular cholesterol pools. Steroid degradation is complex, but a recurring theme is that cycles of β-oxidation are used to iteratively remove acetyl- or propanoyl-CoA groups. These β-oxidation cycles are initiated by the FAD-dependent oxidation of acyl groups, catalyzed by acyl-CoA dehydrogenases (ACADs). We show here that the tcur3481 and tcur3483 genes of Thermomonospora curvata encode subunits of a single ACAD that degrades steroid side chains with a preference for three-carbon over five-carbon substituents. The structure confirms that this enzyme is heterotetrameric, with active sites only in the Tcur3483 subunits. In comparison with the steroid ACAD FadE26-FadE27 from Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the active site is narrower and closed at the steroid-binding end, suggesting that Tcur3481–Tcur3483 is in a catalytically productive state, while FadE26-FadE27 is opened up to allow substrate entry. The flavin rings in Tcur3481-Tcur3483 sit in an unusual pocket created by Gly363, a residue conserved as Ala in steroid ACADs narrowly specific for five-carbon side chains, including FadE34. A Gly363Ala variant of Tcur3481-Tcur3483 prefers five-carbon side chains, while an inverse Ala691Gly FadE34 variant enables three-carbon side chain steroid oxidation. We determined the structure of the Tcur3483 Gly363Ala variant, showing that the flavin rings shift into the more conventional position. Modeling suggests that the shifted flavin position made possible by Gly363 is required to allow the bulky, inflexible three-carbon steroid to bind productively in the active site.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".