Localization of the substrate binding site in the homodimeric mannitol transporter, EIImtl, of Escherichia coli

The mannitol transporter from Escherichia coli, EIImtl, belongs to a class of membrane proteins coupling the transport of substrates with their chemical modification. EIImtl is functional as a homodimer, and it harbors one high affinity mannitol-binding site in the membrane-embedded C domain (IICmtl). To localize this binding site, 19 single Trp-containing mutants of EIImtl were biosynthetically labeled with 5-fluorotryptophan (5-FTrp) and mixed with azi-mannitol, a substrate analog acting as a Forster resonance energy transfer (FRET) acceptor. Typically, for mutants showing FRET, only one 5-FTrp was involved, whereas the 5-FTrp from the other monomer was too distant. This proves that the mannitol-binding site is asymmetrically positioned in dimeric IICmtl. Combined with the available two-dimensional projection maps of IICmtl, it is concluded that a second resting binding site is present in this transporter. Active transport of mannitol only takes place when EIImtl becomes phosphorylated at Cys(384) in the cytoplasmic B domain. Stably phosphorylated EIImtl mutants were constructed, and FRET experiments showed that the position of mannitol in IICmtl remains the same. We conclude that during the transport cycle, the phosphorylated B domain has to move to the mannitol-binding site, located in the middle of the membrane, to phosphorylate mannitol.