Résumé
The fluorescein dye, rose bengal in the dark: (i) inhibited the activity of mung bean aspartate transcarbamylase (EC 2.1.3.2) in a non-competitive manner, when aspartate was the varied substrate; (ii) induced a lag in the time course of reaction and this hysteresis was abolished upon preincubation with carbamyl phosphate; and (iii) converted the multiple bands observed on polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis of enzyme into a single band. The binding of the dye to the enzyme induced a red shift in the visible spectrum of dye suggesting that it was probably interacting at a hydrophobic region in the enzyme. The dye, in the presence of light, inactivated the enzyme and the inactivation was not dependent on pH. All the effects of the dye could be reversed by UMP, an allosteric inhibitor of the enzyme. The loss of enzyme activity on photoinactivation and the partial protection afforded by Nphosphonoacetyl- L-aspartate, a transition state analog and carbamyl phosphate plus succinate, a competitive inhibitor for aspartate, as well as the reversal of the dye difference spectrum by N-phosphonoacetyl-L-aspartate suggested that in the mung bean aspartate transcarbamylase, unlike in the case of Escherichia coli enzyme, the active and allosteric sites may be located close to each other.
Résumé
Aspartate transcarbamylase (EC 2.1.3.2) was purified to homogeniety from germinated mung bean seedlings by treatment with carbamyl phosphate. The purified enzyme was a hexamer with a subunit molecular weight of 20,600. The enzyme exhibited multiple activity bands on Polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, which could be altered by treatment with carbamyl phosphate or UMP indicating that the enzyme was probably undergoing reversible association or dissociation in the presence of these effectors. The carbamyl phosphate stabilized enzyme did not exhibit positive homotropic interactions with carbamyl phosphate and hysteresis. The enzyme which had not been exposed to carbamyl phosphate showed a decrease in specific activity with a change in the concentration of both carbamyl phosphate and protein. The carbamyl phosphate saturation and U M P inhibition patterns were complex with a maximum and a plateau region. The partially purified enzyme also exhibited hysteresis and the hysteretic response, a function of protein concentration, was abolished by preincubation with carbamyl phosphate and enhanced by preincubation with UMP. All these observations are compatible with a postulation that the enzyme activity may be regulated by slow reversible association-dissociation dependent on the interaction with allosteric ligands.