Cytosine deaminase that hydrolyzes creatinine to N-methylhydantoin in various cytosine deaminase-forming microorganisms

Creatinine deimination has been newly detected in the following various cytosine deaminase-forming microorganisms: Escherichia coli, Proteus mirabilis, Pseudomonas aureofaciens, Pseudomonas chlororaphis and Pseudomonas cruciviae. All these microorganisms, except for E. coli, formed cytosine deaminase in a constitutive or repressive way. P. putida 77 and E. coli showed highly increased formation of creatinine deiminase in the presence of creatinine and cytosine. Throughout serial DEAE-Sephacel and Sephacryl S-300 column chromatographies, the cytosine deaminases of these microorganisms, except for that of P. ovalis, were found to hydrolyze both creatinine and cytosine at comparable rates. No concrete evidence was obtained for the presence of any other protein that hydrolyzed creatine and/or cytosine than the cytosine deaminases in the three test microorganisms randomly selected for investigation.Different from P. putida 77, none of the test microorganisms degraded N-methylhydantoin; neither N-methylhydantoin amidohydrolase nor N-carbamoylsarcosine amidohydrolase was formed in the presence of creatinine in these microorganisms. As a result, the wide occurrence of cytosine deaminases in microorganisms was found to be related to the wide distribution of those microorganisms which hydrolyze creatinine to N-methylhydantoin without further degradation.