PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Kropp, Ashleigh
AU  - Gillett, David L.
AU  - Venugopal, Hari
AU  - Gonzálvez, Miguel A.
AU  - Lingford, James P.
AU  - Barlow, Christopher K.
AU  - Zhang, Jie
AU  - Greening, Chris
AU  - Grinter, Rhys
TI  - Quinone extraction drives atmospheric carbon monoxide oxidation in bacteria
AID  - 10.1101/2024.01.09.574806
DP  - 2024 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2024.01.09.574806
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2024/01/09/2024.01.09.574806.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2024/01/09/2024.01.09.574806.full
AB  - Diverse bacteria and archaea use atmospheric carbon monoxide (CO) as an energy source during long-term survival. This process enhances the biodiversity of soil and marine ecosystems globally and removes 250 million tonnes of a toxic, climate-relevant pollutant from the atmosphere each year. Bacteria use [MoCu]-carbon monoxide dehydrogenases (Mo-CODH) to convert CO to carbon dioxide, then transfer the liberated high-energy electrons to the aerobic respiratory chain. However, given no high-affinity Mo-CODH has been purified, it is unknown how these enzymes oxidise CO at low concentrations and interact with the respiratory chain. Here we resolve these knowledge gaps by analysing Mo-CODH (CoxSML) and its hypothetical partner CoxG from Mycobacterium smegmatis. Kinetic and electrochemical analyses show purified Mo-CODH is a highly active high-affinity enzyme (Km = 139 nM, kcat = 54.2 s-1). Based on its 1.85 Å resolution cryoEM structure, Mo-CODH forms a CoxSML homodimer similar to characterised low-affinity homologs, but has distinct active site coordination and narrower gas channels that may modulate affinity. We provide structural, biochemical, and genetic evidence that Mo-CODH transfers CO-derived electrons to the aerobic respiratory chain via the membrane-bound menaquinone-binding protein CoxG. Consistently, CoxG is required for CO-driven respiration, extracts menaquinone from mycobacterial membranes, and binds quinones in a hydrophobic pocket. Finally, we show that Mo-CODH and CoxG genetically and structurally associate in diverse bacteria and archaea. These findings reveal the basis of a biogeochemically and ecologically important process, while demonstrating that the newly discovered process of long-range quinone transport is a general mechanism of energy conservation, which convergently evolved on multiple occasions.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.