A Single Cysteine Residue in the Translocation Pathway of the Mitosomal ADP/ATP Carrier from <em>Cryptosporidium parvum</em> Confers a Broad Nucleotide Specificity

oleh: Martin S. King, Sotiria Tavoulari, Vasiliki Mavridou, Alannah C. King, John Mifsud, Edmund R. S. Kunji

Format: Article
Diterbitkan: MDPI AG 2020-11-01

Deskripsi

<i>Cryptosporidium</i><i>parvum</i> is a clinically important eukaryotic parasite that causes the disease cryptosporidiosis, which manifests with gastroenteritis-like symptoms. The protist has mitosomes, which are organelles of mitochondrial origin that have only been partially characterized. The genome encodes a highly reduced set of transport proteins of the SLC25 mitochondrial carrier family of unknown function. Here, we have studied the transport properties of one member of the <i>C. parvum</i> carrier family, demonstrating that it resembles the mitochondrial ADP/ATP carrier of eukaryotes. However, this carrier has a broader substrate specificity for nucleotides, transporting adenosine, thymidine, and uridine di- and triphosphates in contrast to its mitochondrial orthologues, which have a strict substrate specificity for ADP and ATP. Inspection of the putative translocation pathway highlights a cysteine residue, which is a serine in mitochondrial ADP/ATP carriers. When the serine residue is replaced by cysteine or larger hydrophobic residues in the yeast mitochondrial ADP/ATP carrier, the substrate specificity becomes broad, showing that this residue is important for nucleotide base selectivity in ADP/ATP carriers.