A Noncatalytic Cysteine Residue Modulates Cobalamin Reactivity in the Human B<sub>12</sub> Processing Enzyme CblC
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Human CblC catalyzes the indispensable processing of dietary vitamin B 12 by the removal of its β-axial ligand and an either one- or two-electron reduction of its cobalt center to yield cob(II)alamin and cob(I)alamin, respectively. Human CblC possesses five cysteine residues of an unknown function. We hypothesized that Cys149, conserved in mammals, tunes the CblC reactivity. To test this, we recreated an evolutionary early variant of CblC, namely, Cys149Ser, as well as Cys149Ala. Surprisingly, substitution of Cys149 for serine or alanine led to faster observed rates of glutathione-driven dealkylation of MeCbl compared to wild-type CblC. The reaction yielded aquacobalamin and stoichiometric formation of S -methylglutathione as the demethylation products. Determination of end-point oxidized glutathione revealed significantly uncoupled electron transfer in both mutants compared with the wild type. Long incubation times revealed the conversion of aquacobalamin to cob(II)alamin in the presence of oxygen in mutants Cys149Ser and Cys149Ala but not in wild-type CblC, all without an effect on dealkylation rates. This finding is reminiscent of the catalytic behavior of CblC from Caenorhabditis elegans, wherein Cys149 is naturally substituted by Ser, and the reaction mechanism differs from that of human CblC precisely by the unusual stabilization of cob(II)alamin in the presence of oxygen. Thus, Cys149 tunes the catalytic activity of human CblC by minimizing uncoupled electron transfer that forms GSSG. This occurs at the expense of a slower observed rate constant for the demethylation of MeCbl. This adjustment is compatible with diminished needs for intracellular turnover of cobalamins and with life under increased oxygen concentration.
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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 | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
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".