Sheep cytosolic branched-chain amino acid aminotransferase: cDNA cloning, primary structure and molecular modelling and its unique expression in muscles

This paper presents the cloning and the molecular modelling of the cytosolic branched-chain amino acid aminotransferase (BCATc) from sheep brain. The sheep BCATc cDNA (3 kb) encodes a mature polypeptide of 385 amino acids with a calculated molecular mass of 43072.93 Da. The sequence of the sheep BCATc cDNA is more similar to other mammalian BCATc cDNAs (53-87% identical) than to the sheep mitochondrial branched-chain amino acid aminotransferase (52%). Sheep BCATc belongs to the IV Folding class of pyridoxal-5'-phosphate-depending enzymes. Based on the known structure of the branched-chain amino acid aminotransferase (BCAT) from Escherichia coli, a molecular model of sheep BCATc (amino acid residues 62-385) was built. This is the first three-dimensional model of any mammalian BCAT. It suggests that the enzymatic mechanism of sheep BCATc and likely of all mammalian BCAT is very similar to the mechanism of the E. coli BCAT and confirms the hypotheses regarding to the substrate binding sites of E. coli BCAT. Sheep skeletal muscle, which is the main in vivo site for transamination of branched-chain amino acids, exhibits an unique expression of BCATc.