Mutational analysis of the Escherichia coli phosphate-specific transport system, a member of the traffic ATPase (or ABC) family of membrane transporters. A role for proline residues in transmembrane helices.

The Escherichia coli Pst system is a periplasmic phosphate permease. A mutational analysis of the requirement for function of specific charged residues or proline residues in the two hydrophobic subunits (PstC and PstA) has been carried out. No residues, among 19 charged residues altered, were found to be essential for phosphate uptake, although some alterations resulted in partial effects. Evidence was obtained that the 3 residues, R220 in the PstA protein and R237 and E241 in the PstC protein, previously shown to be required for phosphate transport (Cox, G. B., Webb, D., Godovac-Zimmermann, J., and Rosenberg, H. (1988) J. Bacteriol. 170, 2283-2286; Cox, G. B., Webb, D., and Rosenberg, H. (1989) J. Bacteriol. 171, 1531-1534), interact with each other. A feature of the proposed structures of the PstA and PstC proteins was 2 pairs of proline residues in putative transmembrane helices 3 and 4. While individual substitutions of these proline residues by leucine resulted in loss of phosphate transport activity substitution by alanine only had partial effects. However, if the proline to alanine changes were paired then, depending on the particular subunit, markedly different effects were obtained. The double mutation in the PstA protein resulted in a permanently "closed" system, whereas the double mutation in the PstC protein resulted in a permanently "open" transport system.