Tyrosine assays

Steiner, U., Schhemann, W., and Strack, D., Assay for tyrosine hydroxylation activity of tyrosinase from betalain-forming plants and cell cultures, Anal. Biochem., 238, 72, 1996. 

Kinases are enzymes that place a phosphate group on a serine/threonine or a tyrosine residue of a protein or peptide. All kinase reactions use ATP as the phosphate source. Therefore there have been assays developed that monitor the loss or gain of the peptide/protein substrate (LANCE, ULight) [23], the loss of ATP (easylite luminescence kinaseGlo, Perkin Elmer) [20], or the gain of ADP (Tran-screener TR-FRET) [24]. Many of these formats are applicable to cell based assays. 

Figure 4. DDC (A), serotonin (B), and tyrosine hydroxylase (C) immunore-activity in the posterior region of a wild-type Drosophila ventral ganglion. Tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) encodes the rate-limiting step in dopamine biosynthesis and is a marker for dopamine cells. B and C are the same CNS assayed for both serotonin and TH. M, medial dopamine neurons VL, ventrolateral serotonin neurons DL, dorsolateral dopamine neurons. Short unmarked arrows in C show vacuolated cells that do not contain DDC immunoreactivity. The immunoreactivity in these cells may represent a nonspecific cross-reactivity of the rat TH antibody. The length bar in A is 50 pM. The images are confocal projections generated on a Molecular Dynamics-2000 confocal laser scanning microscope.

The specificity determinants surrounding the tyrosine phospho-acceptor sites have been determined by various procedures. In PTK assays using various substrates, it was determined that glutamic residues of the N-terminal or C-terminal side of the acceptor are often preferred. The substrate specificity of PTK catalytic domains has been analyzed by peptide library screening for prediction of the optimal peptide substrates. Finally, bioinformatics has been applied to identify phospho-acceptor sites in proteins of PTKs by application of a neural network algorithm. 

The formation of peroxynitrite in cells and tissue is frequently characterized by the formation of nitrotyrosine. The formation of nitrotyrosine is not a very specific assay of peroxynitrite detection because the other nitrogen oxide may also take part in this process, but peroxynitrite is undoubtedly the most efficient nitrating agent. (Mechanism of tyrosine nitration by peroxynitrite and other reactive nitrogen compounds has been considered in Chapters 21 and 22.)... 

One of the first pieces of evidence for the mechanism of this reaction involved an attempt to develop a new assay for the activity of tyrosine synthase, which converts phenylalanine to tyrosine. A tritium was placed in the para position of phenylalanine, and it was assumed that oxidation of this position would lead to the loss of tritium and the rate of this loss would be a measure of the activity of the enzyme (Fig. 4.76). 

However, when the results of this assay were compared to other assays, it was found to underestimate the activity of the enzyme. Further analysis revealed that some of the tyrosine contained tritium in the meta position this was referred to as the NIH shift because the early mechanistic studies were performed at the National Institutes of Health (143). The... 

The fluorimetric methods often offer improved specificity and sensitivity over colorimetric procedures and the quantitative assays for the aromatic amino acids tyrosine and phenylalanine illustrate this point. 

L-Amino acid oxidase has been used to measure L-phenylalanine and involves the addition of a sodium arsenate-borate buffer, which promotes the conversion of the oxidation product, phenylpyruvic acid, to its enol form, which then forms a borate complex having an absorption maximum at 308 nm. Tyrosine and tryptophan react similarly but their enol-borate complexes have different absorption maxima at 330 and 350 nm respectively. Thus by taking absorbance readings at these wavelengths the specificity of the assay is improved. The assay for L-alanine may also be made almost completely specific by converting the L-pyruvate formed in the oxidation reaction to L-lactate by the addition of lactate dehydrogenase (EC 1.1.1.27) and monitoring the oxidation of NADH at 340 nm. 

A much more serious genetic disease, first described by Foiling in 1934, is phenylketonuria. Here the disturbance in phenylalanine metabolism is due to an autosomal recessive deficiency in liver phenylalanine hydroxylase (Jervis, 1954) which normally converts significant amounts of phenylalanine to tyrosine. Phenylalanine can therefore only be metabolized to phenylpyruvate and other derivatives, a route which is inadequate to dispose of all the phenylalanine in the diet. The amino acid and phenylpyruvate therefore accummulate. The condition is characterized by serious mental retardation, for reasons which are unknown. By the early 1950s it was found that if the condition is diagnosed at birth and amounts of phenylalanine in the diet immediately and permamently reduced, mental retardation can be minimized. The defect is shown only in liver and is not detectable in amniotic fluid cells nor in fibroblasts. A very sensitive bacterial assay has therefore been developed for routine screening of phenylalanine levels in body fluids in newborn babies. 

In 1979, Ross et al 22i" measured the ODMR of tyrosine in glucagon and the derivative [12-homoarginine]glucagon to examine the effect of chemical modification of a lysine residue adjacent to Tyr-10 and Tyr-13. The guanidinated analogue had lower potency than glucagon in a fat cell hormone receptor assay. Since the tyrosine ODMR and other spectral properties of the polypeptide, including circular dichroism, were essentially identical, it was... 

Among protein aromatic groups, histidyl residues are the most metal reactive, followed by tryptophan, tyrosine, and phenylalanine.1 Copper is the most reactive metal, followed in order by nickel, cobalt, and zinc. These interactions are typically strongest in the pH range of 7.5 to 8.5, coincident with the titration of histidine. Because histidine is essentially uncharged at alkaline pH, complex-ation makes affected proteins more electropositive. Because of the alkaline optima for these interactions, their effects are most often observed on anion exchangers, where complexed forms tend to be retained more weakly than native protein. The effect may be substantial or it may be small, but even small differences may erode resolution enough to limit the usefulness of an assay. 

Comparison of inhibition curves generated by four compounds following serial dilution in assay buffer containing 1% (v/v) DMSO (circles) and in neat DMSO (triangles) in a protein tyrosine kinase assay. 

Sills, M.A., Weiss, D., Pham, Q., Schweitzer, R., Wu, X., and Wu, J.J., Comparison of assay technologies for a tyrosine kinase assay generates different results in high throughput screening, /. Biomol. Screen., 7,191, 2002. 

Gaudet, E.A., Huang, K.S., Zhang, Y., Huang, W., Mark, D., and Sportsman, J.R., A homogeneous fluorescence polarization assay adaptable for a range of protein serine/threonine and tyrosine kinases, ]. Biomol. Screen., 8,164, 2003. 

An assay for NE, E, L-DOPA, DA, 3-nitrotyrosine, m-,o-, and p-tyrosine compared an amperometric detector with a CoulArray detector. A CoulArray detector has the sensitivity of a coulometric detector applied to eight different electrodes to give an array of applied voltages. A C18 column with a mobile phase consisting of an acetate buffer (pH 4.75) and sodium citrate in methanol was used. The assay was... 

A 5-(methylthio)methyl-substituted derivative (cis-28) of ( + )-3-PPP has been reported [91]. The background to the study was the structural similarity between pergolide (29) and (cis-28). However, the biological testing of (cis-28) showed that it is inactive in vivo (GBL model), while an in vitro assay (inhibition of tyrosine hydroxylation) showed (cis-28) to be equipotent to racemic 3-PPP itself. These results indicate that the steric bulk in (cis-28) is not compatible with potent DA receptor interaction. However, since compound (cis-28) was not resolved, there is a possibility that one or both of the enantiomers of (cis-28) might have antagonistic properties [89]. 

Anderson DJ, Puttfarcken PS, Jacobs 1, Faltynek C (2000) Assessment of nicotinic acetylcholine receptor-mediated release of [ H]-norepinephrine from rat brain slices using a new 96-well format assay. Neuropharmacology 39 2663-2672 Anney RJ, Olsson CA, Lotfi-Miri M, Patton GC, Williamson R (2004) Nicotine dependence in a prospective population-based study of adolescents the protective role of a functional tyrosine hydroxylase polymorphism. Pharmacogenetics 14 73-81 Auerbach A, Akk G (1998) Desensitization of mouse nicotinic acetylcholine receptor channels. 

The aromatic rings in the protein absorb ultraviolet light at an absorbance maximum of 280 nm, whereas the peptide bonds absorb at around 205 nm. The unique absorbance property of proteins could be used to estimate the level of proteins. These methods are fairly accurate with the ranges from 20 p,g to 3 mg for absorbance at 280 nm, as compared with 1 to 100 p,g for 205 nm. The assay is non-destructive as the protein in most cases is not consumed and can be recovered. Secondary, tertiary and quaternary structures all affect absorbance therefore, factors such as pH, ionic strength, etc can alter the absorbance spectrum. This assay depends on the presence of a mino acids which absorb UV light (mainly tryptophan, but to a lesser extent also tyrosine). Small peptides that do not contain such a mino acids cannot be measured easily by UV. 

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