Genetic factors influencing human serum trehalase activity.

Trehalase (EC Number 3.2.1.28; trehalose 1-glucohydrolase) is an enzyme which splits the disaccharide trehalose (1-a-D-glucopyranosyl-a-Dglucopyranoside) to glucose; and it is widely distributed in both plants and animals. It was first discovered by Bourquelot (1893) in Aspergillus niger and since then has been found in bacteria, fungi, yeast, the serum of certain fishes, and in insects (Kalf and Reider, 1958). In mammals trehalase has been found in the intestinal mucosae of hog (Dahlqvist, 1960) and man (McMichael, Webb, and Dawson, 1965), human blood serum (Courtois, Debris, and Georget, 1962), and human kidney cortex (Lukomskaya and Tarasova, 1965; Courtois and Demelier, 1966; Sacktor, 1968; Van Handel, 1968, 1969). It was observed by Courtois et al. (1962) that the serum trehalase activity of an individual human subject varied very little from one day to another but that there was a large variability between healthy subjects. The object of the present research was to evaluate possible causes for this large intersubject variability in human serum trehalase activity.