Lactate dehydrogenase substrate specificity

More than 2000 different enzymes are currently known. A system of classification has been developed that takes into account both their reaction specificity and their substrate specificity. Each enzyme is entered in the Enzyme Catalogue with a four-digit Enzyme Commission number (EC number). The first digit indicates membership of one of the six major classes. The next two indicate subclasses and subsubclasses. The last digit indicates where the enzyme belongs in the subsubclass. For example, lactate dehydrogenase (see pp. 98-101) has the EC number 1.1.1.27 (class 1, oxidoreductases subclass 1.1, CH-OH group as electron donor sub-subclass 1.1.1, NAD(P) " as electron acceptor). 

Protein engineering has been carried out to redesign substrate specificity of lactate dehydrogenase from Bacillus stearothermophilus (Wilks et al., 1988 Wilks et ah, 1990) ... 

Flavocytochromes 2 2-hydroxyacid dehydrogenases found in the inter-membrane space of yeast mitochondria where they couple oxidation of the substrate to reduction of cytochrome c. Examples include the enzymes from Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Hansenula anomala, both of which are l-lactate dehydrogenases (Chapman et al., 1998), and the enzyme from Rhodotorula graminis which is a L-mandelate dehydrogenase (Ilias et al., 1998). This article will concentrate on the flavocytochrome 2 (L-lactate cytochrome c oxidoreductase) from S. cerevisiae (Bakersi yeast), since this is by far the most studied of these enzymes (Chapman et al., 1991). Therefore, throughout this article, the term flavocytochrome 2 will refer specifically to the enzyme from S. cerevisiae unless otherwise stated. 

Limited amino acid sequence information has shown that long-chain a-hydroxyacid oxidase from rat kidney is also related to these FMN-containing oxidoreductases (55). It is likely that several further members of this family remain to be identified. The flavodehydrogenase domain shows no sequence similarity to the lactate dehydrogenase from bacteria and higher eukaryotes that utilize NAD as a substrate. Yeasts lack such an enzyme and the substrate specificity of flavocytochrome 62 has presumably evolved independently of the NAD-linked dehydrogenases. 

Developments in molecular biology enable us to change the substrate specificity of enzymes the enzymes can be engineered to be more suitable for the requisite substrate. For example, variations have been made to the structure of the NAD+ dependent L-lactate dehydrogenase from Bacillus stearothermophilus (LDH) 130L Two regions of LDH that border the active site (but are not involved in the catalytic... 

Table 15-7. Broadening the substrate specifity of L-lactate dehydrogenase from Bacillus stearothermophilus by rational protein engineering130.

For example, when a heart attack occurs, a lack of blood supplied to the heart muscle causes some of the heart muscle cells to die. These cells release their contents, including their enzymes, into the bloodstream. Simple tests can be done to measure the amounts of certain enzymes in the blood. Such tests, called enzyme assays, are very precise and specific because they are based on the specificity of the enzyme-substrate complex. If you wish to test for the enzyme lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), you need only to add the appropriate substrate, in this case pyruvate and NADH. The reaction that occurs is the oxidation of NADH to NAD+ and the reduction of pyruvate to lactate. To measure the rate of the chemical reaction, one can measure the disappearance of the substrate or the accumulation of one of the products. In the case of LDH, spectrophotometric methods (based on the light-absorbing properties of a substrate or product) are available to measure the rate of production of NAD+. The choice of substrate determines what enz)rme activity is to be measured. 

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