Phosphate ion partially relieves the cooperativity of effector binding in D-3-phosphoglycerate dehydrogenase without altering the cooperativity of inhibition

The binding of L-serine to phosphoglycerate dehydrogenase from E. coli displays elements of both positive and negative cooperativity. In addition, the inhibition of enzymatic activity by L-serine is also cooperative with Hill coefficients greater than 1. However, phosphate buffer significantly reduces the cooperative effects in serine binding without affecting the cooperativity of inhibition of activity. The maximal degree of inhibition and fluorescence quenching in Tris buffer occurs when an average of two serine binding sites out of four are occupied. This value increases to three out of the four sites at maximal levels of inhibition and quenching in phosphate buffer. The increase from two to three sites appears to be due to the ability of phosphate to reduce the site to site cooperative effects and render each ligand binding site less dependent on each other. The correlation between the level of inhibition and the fractional site occupancy indicates that in Tris buffer, one serine is bound to each interface at maximal effect. In the presence of phosphate, the order of binding appears to change so that both sites at one interface fill before the first site at the opposite interface is occupied. In each case, there is a good correlation between serine binding, conformational change at the regulatory site interfaces, and inhibition of enzyme activity. The observation that phosphate does not appear to have a similar effect on the cooperativity of inhibition of enzymatic activity suggests that there are two distinct cooperative pathways at work: one path between the four serine binding sites, and one path between the serine binding sites and the active sites.