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Updated: Aug 8, 2026

Click-Chemistry Based Fluorometric Assay for Apolipoprotein N-acyltransferase from Enzyme Characterization to High-Throughput Screening
Published on: May 13, 2020
Regulation of the activity of choline acetyl transferase by lipoic acid
1Division of Urology, School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, PA, USA.
Abstract:
The observations reported in this article demonstrate that lipoic acid strongly influences the activity of a purified preparation of choline acetyl transferase. The reduced form, dihydrolipoic acid, is a powerful activator of the enzyme while lipoic acid itself has an inhibitory effect and counteracts the stimulatory effect of dihydrolipoic acid. It is proposed that dihydrolipoic acid serves an essential function in the action of this enzyme and that the ratio of reduced to oxidized lipoic acid in the cell may play an important role in the regulation of the activity of the enzyme. The implications of these findings for cell function and acetyl choline formation are discussed.
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