Catabolism of sulfamate by Mycobacterium sp. CF1

A bacterium able to utilize sulfamate as N-source for growth was isolated from soil and identified as a Mycobacterium sp. An apparently previously unrecorded enzyme, sulfamate hydrolase (EC 3.10.1.-), converts sulfamate to equimolar amounts of ammonia and sulfate. This enzyme was purified to homogeneity and had a Km for sulfamate of 26.36 +/- 4.01 mM. Its Specificity Constant value, 74 M(-1) s(-1), was low, indicating that it was not a particularly good catalyst for this reaction and it may be a hydrolase recruited to this role from some other reaction sequence. However, under equivalent conditions it showed no detectable action on the other sulfamates, cyclamate and sulfamoylbenzoate, or on urea or methylamine.