Lipoprotein lipase (LPL), hepatic lipase, and pancreatic lipase show high sequence homology to one another. The crystal structure of pancreatic lipase suggests that it contains a trypsin-like Asp-His-Ser catalytic triad at the active center, which is shielded by a disulfide bridge-bounded surface loop that must be repositioned before the substrate can gain access to the catalytic residues. By sequence alignment, the homologous catalytic triad in LPL corresponds to Asp156-His241-Ser132, absolutely conserved residues, and the homologous surface loop to residues 217-238, a poorly conserved region. To verify these assignments, we expressed in vitro wild-type LPL and mutant LPLs having single amino acid mutations involving residue Asp156 (to His, Ser, Asn, Ala, Glu, or Gly), His241 (to Asn, Ala, Arg, Gln, or Trp), or Ser132 (to Gly, Ala, Thu, or Asp) individually. All 15 mutant LPLs were totally devoid of enzyme activity, while wild-type LPL and other mutant LPLs containing substitutions in other positions were fully active. We further replaced the 22-residue LPL loop which shields the catalytic center either partially (replacing 6 of 22 residues) or completely with the corresponding hepatic lipase loop. The partial loop-replacement chimeric LPL was found to be fully active, and the complete loop-replacement mutant had approximately 60% activity, although the primary sequence of the hepatic lipase loop is quite different. In contrast, replacement with the pancreatic lipase loop completely inactivated the enzyme. Our results are consistent with Asp156-His241-Ser132 being the catalytic triad in lipoprotein lipase.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)