Saccharomyces cerevisiae Ferrochelatase Forms a Homodimer

Ferrochelatase, the last enzyme of the heme biosynthetic pathway, has for years been considered to be active as a monomer. The crystal structure of Bacillus subtilis ferrochelatase confirmed its monomeric structure. However, animal ferrochelatase was found to form a functional dimer. Data presented here indicate that ferrochelatase from the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is also dimeric. Following two-hybrid studies that had shown an interaction of two ferrochelatase molecules, we employed several different, complementary approaches, such as chemical crosslinking, affinity chromatography, and complementation analysis, to prove that in the yeast cells ferrochelatase forms an active dimer. We have isolated a double mutant, hem15D246V/Y248F, which is probably dimerization-defective. We propose a structural model of yeast ferrochelatase, based on the known structure of the human enzyme, which helps us to understand the differences in dimerization between the wild-type and mutant proteins.