| Abstract: | The “biosynthetic”l threonine (deaminating) dehydratase of 2 cryptophytes (Chroomonas salina and Hemiselmis virescens) showed sensitive inhibition from all thiols tested (dithiothreitol, cysteine, etc.) but no effect from ascorbic acid or reduced NAD. By contrast, the enzyme activities from 5 noncryptophyceaen unicellular algae (2 cyanophytes, 1 rhodophyte, 1 diatom, 1 chlorophyte) were generally not affected by any of these reagents. The thiol reagent inhibition of the cryptophyte enzymes (1) achieved saturation with 60–70% reduction in activity, (2) was considerably reduced by pretreatment of the enzymes with l -threonine and l -isoleucine, and (3) was partially reversed by subsequent treatment with arsenite and exposure to air. It was deduced that such inhibitions were caused by thiol-specific reduction of enzyme-protein disulfide groups essential for the full expression of activity and that these groups were susceptible to ready reductive cleavage and oxidative restoration. This disulfide requirement, unique to the cryptophytes, may be the first recorded case of such a property of threonine dehydratase from all forms of life hitherto studied. The additional activity requirement of the cryptophyte enzymes for sulfhydryl groups (which requirement was common to all the algal enzymes) was confirmed (1) by the study of their sensitivity to inhibition from mercurials and disulfide-sulfhydryl exchanging reagents, and (2) by the partial reversal of these inhibitions from subsequent treatment with dithio-threitol. Both cryptophyte enzymes were densitized to feedback inhibition from l -isoleucine by prior exposure to subinhibitory concentrations of HgCl2 or dithiodipyridine. |
