Oxygen transfer enzymes

Vitamins are substances essential for a healthy life humans must ingest vitamins via their diet because there is no mechanism for their biosynthesis in the body. There are 14 vitamins - the name was coined when the first vitamin chemically identified (vitamin Bi in 1910) turned out to be an amine - a vital amine. A typical vitamin is folic acid, a complex molecule in which the functionally important unit is the bicyclic pyrazino[2,3- f pyrimidine (pteridine) ring system, and its arylaminomethyl substituent. Folic acid is converted in the body into tetrahydrofolic acid (FH4) which is crucial in carrying one-carbon units, at various oxidation levels, for example in the biosynthesis of purines, and is mandatory for healthy development of the foetus during pregnancy. Other essential co-factors that contain pteridine units must and can be biosynthesised in humans - without them we cannot survive - aud are incorporated into oxygen-transfer enzymes based on molybdenum, in which the metal is liganded by a complex ene-dithiolate. 

Ichinose, H. Wariishi, H., and Tanaka, H., Effective oxygen transfer reaction catalyzed by microperoxidase-11 during sulfur oxidation of dibenzothiophene. Enzyme and Microbial Technology, 2002. 30 pp. 334—339. 

Extensive studies have established that the catalytic cycle for the reduction of hydroperoxides by horseradish peroxidase is the one depicted in Figure 6 (38). The resting enzyme interacts with the peroxide to form an enzyme-substrate complex that decomposes to alcohol and an iron-oxo complex that is two oxidizing equivalents above the resting state of the enzyme. For catalytic turnover to occur the iron-oxo complex must be reduced. The two electrons are furnished by reducing substrates either by electron transfer from substrate to enzyme or by oxygen transfer from enzyme to substrate. Substrate oxidation by the iron-oxo complex supports continuous hydroperoxide reduction. When either reducing substrate or hydroperoxide is exhausted, the catalytic cycle stops. 

Redox enzymes catalyze either oxidation or reduction of corresponding substrates. However, these enzymes cannot be regenerated by themselves if neither electron acceptor nor donor is associated. An oxidase, for instance, accepts an electron from corresponding substrate to be oxidized. The enzyme remains in reduced form when the electron cannot be transferred to such an electron acceptor as oxygen. Redox enzymes are thus generally associated by either electron acceptor or donor for their regeneration as shown in Fig.5. 

It was postulated [152, 153] that the aryl amine is oxidized by direct oxygen transfer from Compound I to the substrate. In contrast, for the oxidation of alkaloids, e.g. morphine, codeine and thebaine (Eq. 12), to the corresponding N-oxi-des by hydrogen peroxide in the presence of HRP or crude enzyme preparation from poppy seedlings, a radical mechanism was proposed [154]. 

There are a few common enzymes that have been employed in these types of assay systems over the years, the chief among them being the peroxidase enzyme (3). Peroxidase has an oxidative function when in conjunction with a source of oxygen, transferring electrons to a molecule, which becomes oxidized. The peroxidase enzyme found in the horseradish plant has been used for its ability to carry out this function, for the fact that it is easily obtained, and for the antigenic differences from most mammalian forms of the enzyme. The oxidative function of this enzyme allows for the use of chromogens, which when oxidized, not only change color, but precipitate in such a manner as to render a permanent preparation. 

The vanadium oxide V04 [conjugate base of the acid V03(0H) ] that adopts trigonal bipyramidal geometry and acts as a transition-state mimic for in-hne phosphoryl transfer enzymes. See Oxygen, Oxides, Oxo Anions... 

Achromobacter xylosoxydans has been used to cany out the selective hydroxylation in high yield, using the enzyme which catalyses the first step in nicotinic acid degradation. The whole-cell biotransformation process has been scaled-up to 12 m, which is sufficient to produce high purity 6-hydroxynicotinic acid for the subsequent chemical reactions. The hydroxylation is oxygen requiring, so that oxygen transfer rate-limits the reaction. 

The level of enzyme needed can influence the choice of preparation used for the study. Microsomal preparations from cell cultures allow the use of higher concentrations of active enzyme per unit volume than use of whole cells or cell lysates. The use of whole, viable cells allows the use of longer incubation times but at a lower enzyme concentration per unit volume. In addition, adequate oxygen transfer and nutrient concentrations are needed to maintain culture viability. These requirements impose limitations on cell concentration. In addition, microsomes cannot be efficiently prepared from all cultured cell types. We have found that standard microsome preparation procedures as used for human or rodent liver were unsuitable for isolating active enzymes from human lymphoblasts, and this appears to be a general property of cultured cell lines. Specific catalytic activities in microsomes were lower than for whole cell lysates. This loss of activity appears to happen in other mammalian cell systems which has led to the common use of whole cell lysates.With human lymphoblasts, shortening the length of... 

The enteric bacterium Enterobacter cloacae produces a nitroreductase that reduces nitrofurans, nitroimidazoles, nitrobenzene derivatives, and quinones (Bryant DeLuca, 1991). This oxygen-insensitive enzyme has been purified and is known to require FMN to transfer reducing equivalents from NAD(P)H to the nitroaromatic compounds, TNT being the preferred substrate. Aerobically, this enzyme reduces nitrofurazone through the hydroxylamine intermediate, which then tautomerizes to yield an oxime end-product. Anaerobically, however, the reduction proceeds to the fully reduced amine adduct. When E. cloacae was grown in the presence of TNT, the nitroreductase activity increased five- to tenfold. 

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