Periplasmatic disulfide oxidoreductases from bacterium Escherichia coli--their structure and function

The formation of proper structural disulfide bonds is one of the key steps during the folding of many secretory proteins and occurs both in prokaryotes and eukaryotes. In Gram negative bacterium Escherichia coli this process is catalyzed by a set of periplasmic oxidoreductases, termed Dsb. These proteins function in two separate pathways: (1) oxidizing (DsbA/DsbB system), responsible for introducing S-S bonds, and (2) reducing (DsbC/DsbD system, DsbG, CcmG and CcmH) which acts to isomerase wrongly formed disulfide bonds and participates in maturation of cytochrome c. The first system acts in connection with the inner membrane electron transfer system, using quinone molecules as electron acceptors, whereas reducing pathway relies on constant supply of electrons provided by the cytoplasmic thioredoxin system. Majority of Dsb proteins belongs to the thioredoxin superfamily and they contain the conserved Cys-X-X-Cys motif in their active site. The redox properties of Dsb proteins with the particular focus on structure-function dependence are in this review discussed.