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Applied and Environmental Microbiology, July 2003, p. 4263-4267, Vol. 69, No. 7
0099-2240/03/$08.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/AEM.69.7.4263-4267.2003
Copyright © 2003, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Catabolism of Arylboronic Acids by Arthrobacter nicotinovorans Strain PBA
Ana C. Negrete-Raymond, Barbara Weder, and Lawrence P. Wackett*
Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Biophysics, Biotechnology Institute and Center for Microbial and Plant Genomics, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, Minnesota 55108
Received 7 January 2003/
Accepted 1 April 2003

ABSTRACT
Arthrobacter sp. strain PBA metabolized phenylboronic acid to
phenol. The oxygen atom in phenol was shown to be derived from
the atmosphere using
18O
2. 1-Naphthalene-, 2-naphthalene-, 3-cyanophenyl-,
2,5-fluorophenyl-, and 3-thiophene-boronic acids were also transformed
to monooxygenated products. The oxygen atom in the product was
bonded to the ring carbon atom originally bearing the boronic
acid substituent with all the substrates tested.

INTRODUCTION
The bacterial metabolism of organoboron compounds has been poorly
studied despite the knowledge that boron is required for proper
biological function in microbes and plants. Boron-containing
salts have long been included in bacterial growth media (
29).
More recently, boron has been found as a component of certain
antibiotics, for example, boromycin produced by
Streptomyces species (
10) and the tartrolons produced by
Sorangium cellulosum (
14). Cyanobacteria require boron for proper formation of nitrogen-fixing
heterocysts (
3,
21). A molecule that mediates quorum sensing
in bacteria has been isolated and shown to contain boron in
a furanosyl borate diester (
8). Boron has long been known to
be required for the healthy growth of plants (
31). Plants deficient
in boron have brittle tissues, and plants grown with excess
boron have highly flexible tissues (
2). Recently, boron has
been shown to exist as borate esters that cross-link the pectin
polysaccharides in the plant cell wall (
23).
While boron esters are found in nature, organic chemists typically use boron in alkyl and phenyl boranes, compounds containing direct carbon-to-boron bonds (20). Intermediate between natural-product boron compounds and the boranes are the boronic acids. Boronic acids are used in organic syntheses (5), as specific enzyme inhibitors (22), to immobilize proteins in biotechnology (30), and to sterilize insect pests (28). In the present study, phenylboronic acid was used as an enrichment substrate to identify potential bacteria that could metabolize the compound. The strategy was designed to yield bacteria capable of cleaving the C-B bond of arylboronic acids. An Arthrobacter nicotinovorans strain was obtained and shown to produce phenol in which the phenolic oxygen atom was derived from atmospheric dioxygen. Other aromatic boronic acid compounds were also oxidized to phenols. The data are consistent with an oxygenase-mediated mechanism without the occurrence of an NIH shift of the oxygen substitution.
All chemicals were purchased from Sigma-Aldrich (Milwaukee, Wis.). H218O and 18O2 were purchased from Icon Isotopes (Summit, N.J.). Enrichment studies used a minimal medium (29) containing 5 mM phenylboronic acid as the sole carbon source, added after sterilization. Fifty milliliters of the medium in a 125-ml flask was inoculated with 1 g of soil that had been previously washed with 50 mM phosphate buffer, pH 7.2. Microorganisms were cultured at 30°C in a rotary shaker at 200 rpm. After 4 days of incubation, 1:100 dilutions were made into fresh medium. Several transfers were made in this way.

Strain identification.
Two morphologically different isolates were obtained; one was
characterized here. The chosen strain formed smooth colonies
that turned bright yellow after several days on solid medium.
The bacterium stained gram positive. Cells showed a V-shaped
morphology and fragmented into spherical structures in older
cultures. BiOLOG (Haywood, Calif.) test results were consistent
with the assignment of the organism to the genus
Arthrobacter.
A 1,444-bp DNA fragment corresponding to the 16S rRNA gene was
amplified by PCR with universal primers as described previously
(
18). The amplified 16S rRNA sequence had the strongest match,
99.5% identity, to a 16S sequence in GenBank for
A. nicotinovorans (accession no.
X80743). The strain isolated in this study was
denoted
A. nicotinovorans strain PBA.

Initial product from phenylboronic acid.
A. nicotinovorans strain PBA was grown with phenylboronic acid
in the medium, harvested in exponential phase, resuspended to
an optical density of 5.0 at 600 nm, and incubated with 0.35
mM phenylboronic acid. At fixed time points, the medium was
analyzed for substrate and product(s) by high-pressure liquid
chromatography (HPLC) using a Hewlett-Packard (San Fernando,
Calif.) HP 1100 system equipped with a photodiode array detector
interfaced to an HP ChemStation and fitted with an Adsorbosphere
5-µm-particle-size C
18 column with dimensions of 250 by
4.6 mm (Alltech, Deerfield, Ill.). Acetonitrile was used as
the mobile phase at a flow rate of 1 ml/min. The program used
for separation was 5 min at 5% acetonitrile, increasing thereafter
to 100% in a linear 20-min gradient. The results are shown in
Fig.
1. Phenol is proposed to be the first intermediate formed
during the catabolism of phenylboronic acid by
A. nicotinovorans (Fig.
2). Phenylboronic acid was consumed within 4 h. The first
detectable product of phenylboronic acid metabolism comigrated
with standard phenol by HPLC. The identity of the product was
confirmed by comigration on thin-layer chromatography, UV spectroscopy,
mass spectrometry (MS), and treatment with Gibbs reagent, which
gave a blue product on reaction with phenol (Table
1). Phenol
was observed to form stoichiometrically and then decrease to
undetectable levels (data not shown). Cells grown in rich medium
also metabolized phenylboronic acid and produced phenol without
a discernible lag, suggesting that the activity is not inducible.

Source of oxygen in phenol.
To obtain insight into the enzyme mechanism, the source of oxygen
in the phenol intermediate was determined. The oxygen atom could
come from water or from atmospheric dioxygen. This was tested
in separate experiments using cell incubation mixtures containing
phenylboronic acid and either H
218O or
18O
2. Harvested cells
were resuspended in 50 mM phosphate buffer, pH 7.2, to a final
optical density at 600 nm of 5. For the H
218O experiment, the
buffer contained 32% H
218O. For the
18O
2 experiments, the same
cell and buffer solution was incubated in a 10-ml septum-sealed
vial. The cell suspension was flushed with nitrogen gas and
replaced with
18O
2. Phenol was extracted during the time in
which it appeared stoichiometrically in the culture medium (4
h) by acidifying the medium to pH 2.0 with phosphoric acid,
adding 20% (wt/vol) NaCl, extracting twice with an equal volume
of ethyl acetate, and drying the extract with anhydrous sodium
sulfate. Extracts were concentrated to 100 µl and analyzed
by gas chromatography-MS (GC/MS) on a Varian (Walnut Creek,
Calif.) Saturn GC/MS fitted with a 30-m DB-5 MS column. Authentic
phenol containing the naturally occurring oxygen isotope
16O
showed a parent ion of 94 atomic mass units. When cells were
incubated with phenylboronic acid and [
18O]water, the phenol
product also showed a parent ion of 94 atomic mass units with
no discernible peak at 96 atomic mass units. When cells were
incubated with phenylboronic acid and [
18O]dioxygen in the gas
phase, the parent ion of the product was increased by 2 atomic
mass units, consistent with the incorporation of one atom of
18O into the biological phenol product.

Alternative substrates.
The substrate specificity for aromatic boronic acid oxygenation
was tested by using the same conditions previously described
for phenylboronic acid and an incubation time of 26 h (Table
1). The products of the reaction were confirmed by UV spectroscopy
and MS. All compounds tested were substrates except for 2-(trifluoromethyl)phenylboronic
acid, which showed no disappearance within the limits of experimental
error. Phenylboronic acid and the isomeric methylphenylboronic
acids were completely consumed. 3-Substituted boronic acids
containing nitro or cyano groups were also substrates, as well
as 2,5-difluorophenylboronic acid, but they were incompletely
consumed during the 26-h incubation. The bicyclic aromatic compounds
1- and 2-naphthaleneboronic acid were also incompletely oxidized.
With 3-thiopheneboronic acid, the reaction mixtures turned yellow.
This is consistent with the initial production of the 3-hydroxy-substituted
product followed by partial equilibrium isomerization to the
conjugated keto isomer shown in Table
1 (
6,
7,
13).

Positions of oxygen substitution in the products.
In some oxygenase-catalyzed reactions, the position of the oxygen
atom in the product can differ from the position of the substituent
it replaces via a mechanism known as the NIH shift (
12,
17,
26). Mass spectral analysis of the product would not readily
reveal this. In this context, HPLC experiments were conducted
with starting substrates in which all three isomeric phenol
products could be cleanly separated by HPLC and the positional
isomerism could be further discerned by UV-visible spectroscopy.
A C
18 column was used to analyze the products from 1- and 2-naphthaleneboronic
acid. The phenolic products from 3-cyanophenylboronic acid and
3-nitrophenylboronic acid were analyzed with a polyethylene
glycol 5-µm-particle-size column, 250 by 4.6 mm, from
Supelco (Bellefonte, Pa.). The product obtained with 3-nitrophenylboronic
acid had the same retention time as standard 3-nitrophenol,
and there was no evidence for the formation of minor 2- and
4-nitrophenol isomers. UV-visible spectroscopy confirmed the
identification of the product as 3-nitrophenol. Similarly, 1-naphthaleneboronic
acid gave rise to 1-naphthol and 2-naphthaleneboronic acid gave
rise to only 2-naphthol. 3-Cyanophenylboronic acid yielded only
3-cyanophenol. These data show that the ring position bearing
substituents before and after the reaction is conserved (Fig.
2).

Evidence against a nonenzymatic mechanism of arylboronic acid oxidation.
Arthrobacter strains are known to produce a number of oxidases
that generate hydrogen peroxide (
1,
9,
15), and the chemical
reaction of hydrogen peroxide with arylboronic acids to produce
phenols is well known (
32,
33). In this context, experiments
were conducted to ascertain whether or not biologically generated
hydrogen peroxide might be reacting directly with arylboronic
acids. First, cells of
A. nicotinovorans PBA were incubated
with 3-thiopheneboronic acid in the presence of 1 to 10 U (micromoles
per minute) of bovine liver catalase (Sigma, St. Louis, Mo.)
activity. Hydrogen peroxide is substantially permeable across
bacterial membranes and thus could diffuse into the medium to
react with arylboronic acid substrates (
27). However, the oxidation
of 3-thiopheneboronic acid to 3-hydroxythiophene by intact cells
was not inhibited. Next, cell extracts were prepared from
A. nicotinovorans PBA cells grown on phenylboronic acid. The catalase
activity of the cell extract was measured as described previously
(
25) and found to be 10 U per mg of protein. Ten units of catalase
was shown to strongly inhibit the in vitro chemical reaction
of hydrogen peroxide and 3-thiopheneboronic acid at concentrations
of hydrogen peroxide that completely consume the substrate within
2 h. These data indicate that freely diffusible hydrogen peroxide
is very unlikely to be responsible for the arylboronic acid
oxidation reactions observed with
A. nicotinovorans strain PBA.
However, efforts to measure cell-free oxygenase activity in
protein extracts from
A. nicotinovorans, with 3-thiopheneboronic
acid as the substrate and NADH or NADPH as reductants, were
unsuccessful. In total, these data mitigate against a reaction
of free hydrogen peroxide with arylboronic acids and are consistent
with a direct enzymatic mechanism of biological arylboronic
acid oxidation.

Metabolism of phenol.
To identify potential further metabolites of phenylboronic acid
oxidation, phenol was incubated with
A. nicotinovorans strain
PBA. Culture supernatants were extracted and derivatized with
N,
O-bis-trismethylsilyl trifluoroacetamide, and the resulting
material was subjected to GC/MS. A compound with a GC retention
time of 12.6 min was observed. This was the same as the retention
time of authentic catechol that was derivatized in the same
manner. MS was also consistent with an identification of the
product as a silylated catechol (
m/
z, 254, 239, 151, 73, 45).
The oxidation of phenol to catechol (Fig.
2) has many biological
precedents (
16,
24).

Conclusions.
The present study begins to define organoboronic acid metabolism,
a previously little-studied aspect of microbial metabolism.
The success of the enrichments, yielding more than one pure
culture from the initial soil surveyed, suggests that this metabolic
capability is not rare. The observations that the first detectable
product is phenol and that the origin of the oxygen atom is
diatomic oxygen indicate why bacteria with the targeted metabolic
activity were readily obtained. Oxygenases are widespread in
soil microorganisms and are widely known to displace different
substituents from alicyclic and aromatic rings to generate hydroxylated
intermediates (
4,
11,
34; L. B. M. Ellis and L. P. Wackett,
The University of Minnesota Biocatalysis/Biodegradation Database,
http://umbbd.ahc.umn.edu/, 22 December 2002). For example, aromatic
rings containing fluorine, chlorine, bromine, cyano, nitro,
amino, sulfonate, and carboxylate substituents are oxygenated
to produce hydroxylated products with displacement of the original
substituent (
12,
17,
34).
There is precedent for biological oxygenation of the nonaromatic compound 2-methylcyclohexylboronic acid (19). The flavoprotein monooxygenase cyclohexanone monooxygenase displaced a boronic acid substituent from a chiral carbon to yield a product alcohol with same absolute configuration as the substrate. These data were interpreted as being consistent with oxygen attack at the boron atom and rearrangement of the intermediate to produce a boronate ester, which subsequently underwent hydrolysis to the alcohol. Currently, studies are being conducted to identify the gene(s) involved in microbial phenylboronic acid metabolism to further define the enzyme catalyzing the transformation.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank Gil Johnson for help with GC/MS analysis, Jack Richman
for help with NMR, and Jeff Osborne and Charlotte Rosendahl
for helpful discussions.
This work was supported under grant ER63268-1018305-0007173 from the Office of Science's Office of Biological and Environmental Research, U.S. Department of Energy.

FOOTNOTES
* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Biophysics, Biotechnology Institute and Center for Microbial and Plant Genomics, University of Minnesota, 1479 Gortner Ave., St. Paul, MN 55108. Phone: (612) 625-3785. Fax: (612) 625-1700. E-mail:
wackett{at}biosci.cbs.umn.edu.


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Applied and Environmental Microbiology, July 2003, p. 4263-4267, Vol. 69, No. 7
0099-2240/03/$08.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/AEM.69.7.4263-4267.2003
Copyright © 2003, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
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