Structure
As one of the most important RDH, 11-cis-retinol dehydrogenase catalyzes the 11-cis retinaldehyde (the most common visual pigments in higher animals) formation. The enzyme is mainly expressed in the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) and is part of short-chain dehydrogenase (SDR) / reductase superfamily. The integral membrane enzyme is anchored to the membranes by its two hydrophobic chains. The catalytic domain of 11-cis-retinol dehydrogenase is restricted to the lumenal compartment, suggesting its origin from compartmentalized process. 11-cis-retinol dehydrogenase is also mainly associated to the smooth endoplasmic reticulum of RPE cells. The 32-kDa integral membrane protein protein (p32) was found to act as the stereospecific 11-cis-retinol dehydrogenase in the presence of NAD+ cofactor, and p32 catalyzes the biosynthesis of 11-cis retinal commonly found visual chromophore.
One of the widely studied genes of retinol dehydrogenase RDH12, which encodes retinol dehydrogenase is part of the superfamily of short-chained alcohol dehydrogenases and reductases. RDH12 is mainly expressed in neuroretina and is composed of 7 exons encoding a 360-amino acid peptide.
Zinc molecules serve as the ligand cofactor with the cofactor NAD. The retinol will interact with the enzyme at the area between those two cofactors.
However, not all retinol dehydrogenases in visual cycle are identified, and this remains challenging to scientists due to the overlapping expressions and activity redundancy among two large RDH and RDH-like producing classes: microsomal short-chain dehydrogenase/reductase and cytosolic medium-chain alcohol dehydrogenases.
In Bovine, retinol dehydrogenase is found as a part of retinal rod outer segments and shows difficulty when separating from membrane. Its Stokes radius is 8.5 nm in Lubrol 12A9 mixed micelle.
Read more about this topic: Retinol Dehydrogenase
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