Purification, characteristics and sequence of a peptide containing an essential lysine residue

Glutamate dehydrogenase (EC 1.4.1.2-4) has been purified and crystallized from the acetone powder of tuna liver. The enzyme has a molecular weight of 333 000 +/- 15 000 as evaluated by sedimentation equilibrium and constists of six identical subunits. Unlike the bovine enzyme the molecular weight does not increase with increasing protein concentration indicating that the tuna enzyme has no tendency to polymerize. The amino acid composition and peptide maps of the tuna and bovine liver enzyme are similar, suggesting considerable homology between the two enzymes. Furthermore, from the tryptic digest a hexadecapeptide containing a lysine residue reactive to pyridoxal 5'-phosphate exhibits the same composition and sequence as the peptide containing the reactive lysine-126 in the sequence of the bovine enzyme. The molecular activity is 25 and 510 mol of substrate per mol enzyme per s, respectively, for the glutamate oxidation and the alpha-ketoglutarate reduction with NAD or NADP as coenzymes. The enzyme is regulated by pyridine nucleotides like other vertebrate enzymes, but it also exhibits some coenzyme specificity, the activity being about fifteen times higher with NAD than with NADP.