Half-sites oxidation of bovine liver uridine diphosphate glucose dehydrogenase

6,6-Dithiodinicotinate shows half-of-the-sites reactivity towards the six catalytic-site thiol groups of bovine liver UDP-glucose dehydrogenase. The reagent introduces three intrasubunit disulphide linkages between catalytic-site thiol groups and non-catalytic-site thiol groups and abrogates 60% of the catalytic activity of the hexameric enzyme; excess 2-mercaptoethanol rapidly restores full catalytic activity. These results show the half-of-the-sites behaviour of the enzyme with the reagent and the presence of a non-catalytic-site thiol group capable of forming a disulphide linkage with a catalytic-site thiol group on the same subunit without irreversible denaturation.

The binding of oxidized and reduced nicotinamide–adenine dinucleotides to bovine liver uridine diphosphate glucose dehydrogenase

The binding of NAD+and NADH to bovine liver UDP-glucose dehydrogenase was studied by using gel-filtration and fluorescence-titration methods. The enzyme bound 0.5mol of NAD+and 2 mol of NADH/mol of subunit at saturating concentrations of both substrate and product. The dissociation constant for NADH was 4.3μm. The binding of NAD+to the enzyme resulted in a small quench of protein fluorescence whereas the binding of NADH resulted in a much larger (60–70%) quench of protein fluorescence. The binding of NADH to the enzyme was pH-dependent. At pH8.1 a biphasic profile was obtained on titrating the enzyme with NADH, whereas at pH8.8 the titration profile was hyperbolic. UDP-xylose, and to a lesser extent UDP-glucuronic acid, lowered the apparent affinity of the enzyme for NADH.