Purification of steroid sulphohydrolase from human placenta microsomes

A procedure for purification of oestrone sulphate sulphohydrolase from human placenta microsomes was elaborated. The use of Concanavalin-A-Sepharose chromatography made it possible to separate, for the first time, oestrone sulphate sulphohydrolase (Mr 36,000, optimum pH 7.0, Km 5.5 X 10(-5) M, specific activity 1563 nmol X min-1 X mg protein-1) from arylsulphatase C (Mr 45,000, optimum pH 7.6, Km 0.96 X 10(-3) M). The observed third subfraction showed both arylsulphate C and oestrone sulphate sulphohydrolase activity. Sigmoidal kinetics of oestrone sulphate sulphohydrolase after DEAE-cellulose chromatography (Mr 130,000) points to the allosteric character of the enzyme.