Urease synthesis

Folacco, J.C. Nitrogen metabolism In soybean tissue culture. II. Urea utilization and urease synthesis require Nl " ". Plant Physiol.. 1977, 59, 827-830. 

Urease assay. When Proteus mirabilis grows in a urea-containing medium it hydrolyses the urea to ammonia and consequently raises the pH of the medium. This production of urease is inhibited by aminoglycoside antibiotics (inhibitors of protein synthesis Chapter 8). In practice, it is difficult to obtain reliable results by this method. 

Fig. 14.13 Schematic illustration of the urease-catalyzed synthesis of CaC03 inside halloysite nanotubes.

Rhaman and coworkers [112,113] studied the adsorption of lipase on [MgAl] LDH and its biocatalytic activity for butyl oleate synthesis. They demonstrated that up to 277 and 531 mgg-1 of lipase were adsorbed on [MgAl-N03] and [MgAl-Dodecylsulfate] LDH, respectively, showing the highest adsorption capacity of the anionic clays compared to smectite or inorganic phosphate. Recently, we reported the adsorption isotherms of urease on [ZnRAl] LDH under various experimental conditions (pH, buffer) [117]. The kinetic study showed the fast adsorption process (less than 60 min) (Figure 15.3). 

Mobley HLT, Garner RM, Bauerfeind R 1995. Helicobacter pylori nickel-transport gene AA synthesis of catalytically active urease in Escherichia coli independent of growth conditions. Mol Microbiol 16 97-109. 

The formation and excretion of urea is the primary mechanism by which excess nitrogen, in the form of ammonia, is removed from the body. Surprisingly, it was found that the actual rate of urea synthesis exceeded considerably the rate of excretion of the urea. The interesting question, therefore, is what is the fate of this lost urea The answer is that urea enters the large intestine, where it is degraded by microorganisms that possess the enzyme urease, which catalyses the reaction ... 

Figure 8.32 Urea salvage in humans. Urea diffuses into the colon where it is converted to ammonia in those microorganisms that possess the enzyme urease. The ammonia is used by most microorganisms in the colon to synthesise their protein. Upon death in the colon, these organisms are degraded and the protein is hydrolysed to amino acids, some of which are absorbed by the host to be used for protein synthesis, etc.

Fig. 8 Synthesis of amino acids by a multienzyme system consisting of leucine dehydrogenase (LeuDH) catalyzing the reductive amination of the corresponding keto acid, L-lactate dehydrogenase (l-LDH), and lactate for the regeneration of NADH and urease for the in situ generation of ammonia. The coenzyme NAD+ was covalently bond to dextran, enzymes and dextran-coupled NAD+ were...

Historically, the first chemical synthesis of urea by Wohler, from ammonium cyanate in 1828, was a milestone that established a bridge between inorganic and organic chemistry. Urease was the first enzyme ever to be crystallized (6), and it was the first protein shown to contain nickel ions in the active site (7). The first X-ray crystal structure of urease became known in 1995 (8). Significant progress was made since then toward an understanding of its catalytic mechanism, as well as toward the structural and functional emulation of its active site by synthetic model complexes (5, 9). 

Many enz5mies have been named by adding the suffix "-ase" to the name of their substrate or to a word or phrase describing their activity, e.g. UREASE catalyze hydrolysis of urea, MALTASE act on maltose, and DNA polymerase catalyze the synthesis of DNA. Other enzymes such as PEPSIN and TRYPSIN have names they do not denote their substrates. 

Nickel is required for the synthesis of active urease in plant and other cells. The enzyme catalyzes the hydrolysis of urea to carbon dioxide and ammonia, via the intermediate formation of carbamate ion (equation 46). The molecular weight has been redetermined recently as 590 000 30 000, with six subunits. Each subunit has two nickel centres and binds one mole of substrate. The activity of the enzyme is directly proportional to the nickel content, suggesting an essential role for nickel in the enzyme. Several approaches, including EXAFS measurements, suggest that histidine residues provide some ligands to nickel, and that the geometry is distorted octahedral. There appears to be a role for a unique cysteine residue in each subunit out of the 15 groups present. Covalent modification of this residue blocks the activity of the enzyme. 

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