Editing disulphide bonds: error correction using redox currencies

Summary The disulphide bond‐introducing enzyme of bacteria, DsbA, sometimes oxidizes non‐native cysteine pairs. DsbC should rearrange the resulting incorrect disulphide bonds into those with correct connectivity. DsbA and DsbC receive oxidizing and reducing equivalents, respectively, from respective redox components (quinones and NADPH) of the cell. Two mechanisms of disulphide bond rearrangement have been proposed. In the redox‐neutral ‘shuffling’ mechanism, the nucleophilic cysteine in the DsbC active site forms a mixed disulphide with a substrate and induces disulphide shuffling within the substrate part of the enzyme–substrate complex, followed by resolution into a reduced enzyme and a disulphide‐rearranged substrate. In the ‘reduction–oxidation’ mechanism, DsbC reduces those substrates with wrong disulphides so that DsbA can oxidize them again. In this issue of Molecular Microbiology , Berkmen and his collaborators show that a disulphide reductase, TrxP, from an anaerobic bacterium can substitute for DsbC in Escherichia coli . They propose that the reduction–oxidation mechanism of disulphide rearrangement can indeed operate in vivo . An implication of this work is that correcting errors in disulphide bonds can be coupled to cellular metabolism and is conceptually similar to the proofreading processes observed with numerous synthesis and maturation reactions of biological macromolecules.