Sulfur, as a macronutrient, is essential for all kinds of organisms. Sulfate, the primary available source of sulfur, is firstly activated by adenylation catalyzed by ATP sulfurylase (ATPS) to form adenosine 5′-phosphosulfate (APS), which will be further phosphorylated into 3′-phosphoadenosine 5′-phosphosulfate (PAPS) by APS kinase (APSK). In some organisms, sulfate activating related enzymes are assembled to form sulfate-activating complex (SAC) to facilitate APS synthesis, the thermodynamically unfavorable reaction. In genome of a moderate thermophilic bacterium, Thermobifida fusca, there are presumably GTPasecoupled ATPS and one putative bifunctional ATPS/APSK type SAC. In this study, this putative SAC of T. fusca was prokaryotically expressed, purified and characterized. Activity assays showed that it contained APSK activity, while lacked ATPS activity. SAC of T. fusca was further used as a coupling enzyme to assay APS formation catalyzed by yeast ATPS. Based on the sequence alignment and modeled structure, we infer that the divergences of two conserved motifs and the missing of a loop and a helix-turn-helix motifs may contribute to the deficiency of ATPS activity.

Sulfate can be activated by ATP sulfurylase and adenosine 5’-phosphosulfate kinase (APSK) in vivo. Recent studies suggested that APSK in Arabidopsis thaliana regulated the partition between APS reduction and phosphorylation and its activity can be modulated by cellular redox status. In order to study regulation of APSK in rice (OsAPSK), OsAPSK1 gene was cloned and its activity was analyzed. OsAPSK1 C36 and C69 were found to be the conserved counterparts of C86 and C119, which involved in disulfide formation in AtAPSK. C36A/C69A OsAPSK1 double mutation was made by site directed mutagenesis. OsAPSK1 and its mutant were prokaryotically over-expressed and purified, and then assayed for APS phosphorylation activity. OsAPSK1 activity was depressed by oxidized glutathione, while the activity of its mutant was not. Further studies in the case that oxidative stress will fluctuate in vivo 3’-phosphoadenosine-5’-phosphosulfate content, and all APSK isoenzymes have similar regulation patterns are necessary to be performed.

•Yeast 3′,5′-bisphosphate nucleotidase (HAL2) was purified and characterized.•Kd for PAP was determined to be nanomolar with PAP analogue.•Series of expression vectors with HAL2 as a tag were constructed.•Purification protocol was designed and successfully used to purify proteins.•HAL2 tag was compared with commonly used protein purification tags.Affinity chromatography is one of the most popular methods for protein purification. Each tag method has its advantages and disadvantages, and combination of different tags and developing of new tags had been proposed and performed. Yeast 3′,5′-bisphosphate nucleotidase, also known as HAL2, hydrolyzes 3′-phosphoadenosine 5′-phosphate (PAP) with submicromolar Km, which indicated the tight interactions between HAL2 and PAP. In order to explore the feasibility of HAL2 as a protein purification affinity tag, HAL2 was further characterized with PAP as substrate. Results demonstrated that KmPAP and kcatPAP were ∼0.3 μM and ∼11 s−1, respectively. Kd for PAP was 0.008 μM in the presence of Ca2+. pH was also found to affect interactions between HAL2 and PAP, with tightest binding (Kd ∼ 8 nM) at pH 7.5 and 8. The purification protocol was rationally designed based on nanomolar affinity to PAP agarose in the presence of Ca2+, which could satisfy the metal requirement for PAP binding, prevent hydrolysis of immobilized PAP and could be chelated by ethylene glycol tetraacetic acid (EGTA) for elution. A series of expression vectors were further constructed and Escherichia coli adenosine 5′-phosphosulfate kinase (APSK) was prokaryotically expressed, purified and characterized. Ready to use expression vector with eight commonly used restriction enzyme recognition sites in multiple cloning site was subsequently constructed. By comparing with current popular tags, HAL2 was found to be an efficient and economical tag for prokaryotic protein expression and purification.