Relative confribution of dehydrogenases to overall respiratory ETh activity in some marine organisms

Respiration is an oxidation-reduction process in which the electronflux through the respiratory electron transfer system (ETS)is sustained by the action of different dehydrogenases. Theseenzymes, as parts of the ETS, oxidize natural substrates (succinate,NADH and NADPH) of the cells and use the reducing equivalentsto activate ATP synthesis. We studied the relative contributionof the three main dehydrogenases to the overall ETh activityin some marine organisms. Each organism was analysed for thecombined and separate activities of NADH, NADPH and succinatedehydrogenases. The ETS activity was measured as the abilityof each organism to reduce the tetrazolium salt, INT, when suppliedwith their natural substrates. The results showed that (i) NADHdehydrogenase was generally the most active dehydrogenase inprokaryotic and eukaryotic cells; (ii) INT does not fully collectreducing equivalents from succinate through the succinate dehydrogenase;and (iii) the sum of the activities measured separately exceedsthe combined activity when the three enzymes are measured together.We suggest that competition of the individual dehydrogenasesfor a common limiting electron acceptor, ubiquinone, may explainthese observations.