Studies on Cu2+-induced Resistant-denaturation of PPO from Nictiana Tobacum

In order to investigate the interaction between exogenous Cu2+ and Polyphenoloxidase (PPO) from Nictiana Tobacum, the Cu2+-induced resistant-denaturation against guanidine hydrochloride(Gdn-HCl) was studied by the following enzymatic activity assay, fluorescence spectroscopy and circular dichroism (CD). The results show that the GdnHCl-induced unfolding is a two-state process with no detectable inter mediate state in the absence of exogenous Cu2+, while the GdnHCl-induced unfolding in the presence of 10.0 mmol/L exogenous Cu2+ follows a three-state transition with an intermediate state, which results from the fact that Cu2+ increases the structural stability of native PPO and its intermediate. In terms of enzymatic activities, 6 mol/L GdnHCl makes PPO lose 81.4% of its original activity after 5 min, inactivate completely after 30 min, while in the presence of 10.0 mmol/L exogenous Cu2+, only 39.4% and 75.1%, after 5 and 30 min respectively. According to the CD measurements, the relative average fractions of α-helix, anti-parallel2-sheet, 2-turn/parallel 2-sheet, aromatic residues and disulfide bond, and random coil/γ-turn are 1.1%, 3.8%, 3.3%, 7.5% and 84.3%, respectively, in the 6.0mol/L GdnHCl containing no CuSO4, but34.2%, 13.7%, 21.0%, 9.5% and 21.6%, respectively, in the same concentration of Gdn-HCl containing 10mmol/L CuSO4.