Effect of Cu(II) and Conserved Copper Binding Sites on Multicopper Oxidase CopA and Characterization of the BioMnOx

Abstract The microbial manganese removal process is believed to be the catalytic oxidation of Mn(II) by manganese oxidase. In this study, the multicopper oxidase CopA was purified and found to have high manganese oxidation activity in vitro and Cu(II) can significantly enhance its manganese oxidation activity. The gene site-directed mutagenesis was used to mutate four conserved copper binding sites of CopA and then obtain four mutant strains. The manganese removal efficiency of the four strains was determined to find that H120 is the catalytic active site of the CopA. Protein modification analysis of CopA obtained under different conditions by mass spectrometry revealed that the loss of Cu(Ⅱ) and the mutation of the conserved copper binding site H120 resulted in the loss of modification of ethoxyformyl and quinone, the number of modifications was reduced and the position of modification was changed, eventually causing a decrease in protein activity. It reveals that Cu(II) and H120 play an indispensable role in the manganese oxidation of the multicopper oxidase CopA. The Mn valence state of BioMnOx was analyzed by XPS, finding that both the strain-mediated product and the CopA-mediated product were composed of MnO 2 and Mn 3 O 4 and the average valence of Mn is 3.2.