Peptide deformylase (PDF) inhibitors have a strong potential to be used as a new class of antibiotics. However, recent studies have shown that the mitochondria of most eukaryotes, including humans, contain an essential PDF, PDF1A. The crystal structure of the Arabidopsis thaliana PDF1A (AtPDF1A), considered representative of PDF1As in general, has been determined. This structure displays several similarities to that of known bacterial PDFs. AtPDF1A behaves as a dimer, with the C-terminal residues responsible for linking the two subunits. This arrangement is similar to that of Leptospira interrogans PDF, the only other dimeric PDF identified to date. AtPDF1A is the first PDF for which zinc has been identified as the catalytic ion. However, the zinc binding pocket does not differ from the binding pockets of PDFs with iron rather than zinc. The crystal structure of AtPDF1A in complex with a substrate analog revealed that the substrate binding pocket of PDF1A displays strong modifications. The S1' binding pocket is significantly narrower, due to the creation of a floor from residues present in all PDF1As but not in bacterial PDFs. A true S3' pocket is created by the residues of a helical CD-loop, which is very long in PDF1As. Finally, these modified substrate binding pockets modify the position of the substrate in the active site. These differences provide guidelines for the design of bacterial PDF inhibitors that will not target mitochondrial PDFs.

Dedicated machinery for N-terminal methionine excision (NME) was recently identified in plant organelles and shown to be essential in plastids. We report here the existence of mitochondrial NME in mammals, as shown by the identification of cDNAs encoding specific peptide deformylases (PDFs) and new methionine aminopeptidases (MAP1D). We cloned the two full-length human cDNAs and showed that the N-terminal domains of the encoded enzymes were specifically involved in targeting to mitochondria. In contrast to mitochondrial MAP1D, the human PDF sequence differed from that of known PDFs in several key features. We characterized the human PDF fully in vivo and in vitro. Comparison of the processed human enzyme with the plant mitochondrial PDF1A, to which it is phylogenetically related, showed that the human enzyme had an extra N-terminal domain involved in both mitochondrial targeting and enzyme stability. Mammalian PDFs also display non-random substitutions in the conserved motifs important for activity. Human PDF site-directed mutagenesis variants were studied and compared with the corresponding plant PDF1A variants. We found that amino acid substitutions in human PDF specifically altered its catalytic site, resulting in an enzyme intermediate between bacterial PDF1Bs and plant PDF1As. Because (i) human PDF was found to be active both in vitro and in vivo, (ii) the entire machinery is conserved and expressed in most animals, (iii) the mitochondrial genome expresses substrates for these enzymes, and (iv) mRNA synthesis is regulated, we conclude that animal mitochondria have a functional NME machinery that can be regulated.

Peptide deformylases (PDFs) are essential enzymes of the N-terminal protein processing pathway of eubacteria. The recent discovery of two types of PDFs in higher plants, PDF1A and PDF1B, and the detection of PDF1A in humans, have raised questions concerning the importance of deformylation in eukaryotes. Here, we have characterized fully in vitro and compared the properties of the two classes of eukaryotic PDFs, PDF1A and PDF1B, using the PDFs from Arabidopsis thaliana and Lycopersicon esculentum. We have shown that the PDFs of a given class (1A or 1B) all display similar features, independently of their origin. We also observed similar specificity of all plant PDFs for natural substrate peptides, but identified a number of biochemical differences between the two classes (1A or 1B). The main difference lies at the level of the bound cofactor, iron for PDF1B-like bacterial PDFs, and zinc for PDF1A. The nature of the metal cation has important consequences concerning the relative sensitivity to oxygen of the two plant PDFs. Investigation of the specificity of these enzymes with unusual substrates revealed additional differences between the two types of PDFs, enabling us to identify specific inhibitors with a lower affinity against PDF1As. However, the two plant PDFs were inhibited equally strongly in vitro by actinonin, an antibiotic that specifically acts on bacterial PDFs. Uptake of actinonin by A. thaliana seedlings was used to investigate the function of PDFs in the plant. Because it induces an albino phenotype, we conclude that deformylation is likely to play an essential role in the chloroplast.

The N‐terminal protein processing pathway is an essential mechanism found in all organisms. However, it is widely believed that deformylase, a key enzyme involved in this process in bacteria, does not exist in eukaryotes, thus making it a target for antibacterial agents such as actinonin. In an attempt to define this process in higher eukaryotes we have used Arabidopsis thaliana as a model organism. Two deformylase cDNAs, the first identified in any eukaryotic system, and six distinct methionine aminopeptidase cDNAs were cloned. The corresponding proteins were characterized in vivo and in vitro. Methionine aminopeptidases were found in the cytoplasm and in the organelles, while deformylases were localized in the organelles only. Our work shows that higher plants have a much more complex machinery for methionine removal than previously suspected. We were also able to identify deformylase homologues from several animals and clone the corresponding cDNA from human cells. Our data provide the first evidence that lower and higher eukaryotes, as well as bacteria, share a similar N‐terminal protein processing machinery, indicating universality of this system.