Abstact

The early transition metal oxoanions vanadate, molybdate, and tungstate are widely used inhibitors for phosphatase enzymes. These oxoanions could inhibit such enzymes by simply mimicking the tetrahedral geometry of phosphate ion. However, in some cases, the enzyme-inhibitor dissociation constants (Ki) for these oxoanions are much lower than that for phosphate. Such observations gave rise to the hypothesis that in some cases these transition metal oxoanions may inhibit phosphomonoesterases by forming complexes that resemble the trigonal bipyramidal geometry of the SN2(P) transition state. As a test of this, the crystal structures of a low molecular weight protein tyrosine phosphatase at pH 7.5 complexed with the inhibitors vanadate and molybdate were solved at 2.2 A resolution and compared to a newly refined 1.9 A structure of the enzyme. Geometric restraints on the oxoanions were relaxed during refinement in order to minimize model bias. Both inhibitors were bound at the active site, and the overall protein structures were left unchanged, although some small but significant side chain movements at the active site were observed. Vanadate ion formed a covalent linkage with the nucleophile Cys12 at the active site and exhibited a trigonal bipyramidal geometry. In contrast, simple tetrahedral geometry was observed for the weaker molybdate complex. These studies are consistent with the conclusion that vanadate inhibits tyrosine phosphatases by acting as a transition state analog. The structure of the vanadate complex may be expected to closely resemble the transition state for reactions catalyzed by protein tyrosine phosphatases.