The activity of urea cycle enzymes was assayed in duodenal biopsy specimens obtained from a female infant who presented with neonatal hyperammonaemia. All enzyme levels were normal except N-acetyl glutamate-dependent carbamyl phosphate synthetase 1 (CPS1) which was half the mean activity in normal control specimens. A similar deficiency of CPS1 was also shown in duodenal specimens from the pati...

We describe a new enzymic colorimetric method in which urea is measured in serum by use of a single reagent mixture. Ammonia produced by urea hydrolysis, catalyzed by urease, reacts with glutamate and ATP in the presence of glutamine synthetase. The ADP so produced is assayed in reactions catalyzed sequentially by pyruvate kinase and pyruvate oxidase in a system that generates hydrogen peroxide...

Muscle growth requires a constant supply of amino acids (AAs) from the blood. Therefore, plasma AA profile is a critical factor for maximizing the growth performance of animals, including pigs. This research was conducted to study how dietary lysine intake affects plasma AA profile in pigs at the late production stage. Eighteen crossbred (Large White × Landrace) finishing pigs (nine barrows and...

Aureococcus anophagefferens is a harmful alga that dominates plankton communities during brown tides in North America, Africa, and Asia. Here, RNA-seq technology was used to profile the transcriptome of a Chinese strain of A. anophagefferens that was grown on urea, nitrate, and a mixture of urea and nitrate, and that was under N-replete, limited and recovery conditions to understand the molecul...

Superoxide reductase (SOR) is a small metalloenzyme that catalyzes reduction of O(2)(*)(-) to H(2)O(2) and thus provides an antioxidant mechanism against superoxide radicals. Its active site contains an unusual mononuclear ferrous center, which is very efficient during electron transfer to O(2)(*)(-) [Lombard, M., Fontecave, M., Touati, D., and Nivière, V. (2000) J. Biol. Chem. 275, 115-121]. T...

The objective of this investigation was to develop a new auxotropic mutant from a regulatory mutant and to examine its potency for L-lysine production. A high L-lysine yielding strain Micrococcus glutamicus AB200 was developed from a regulatory mutant Micrococcus glutamicus AB5 by subsequent mutagenic treatment with UV rays and methyl methane sulfonate respectively. Treatment of UV rays on the ...

Accumulating evidence suggests that reversible protein acetylation may be a major regulatory mechanism that rivals phosphorylation. With the recent cataloging of thousands of acetylation sites on hundreds of proteins comes the challenge of identifying the acetyltransferases and deacetylases that regulate acetylation levels. Sirtuins are a conserved family of NAD(+)-dependent protein deacetylase...

It has been previously demonstrated that the hepatic level of each enzyme concerned with the biosynthesis of urea in the rat, i.e. carbamyl phosphate synthetase, ornithine transcarbamylase, argininosuccinate synthetase, argininosuccinase, and arginase (see Ratner (1) and Cohen and Brown (2) for discussions of the enzymatic steps of urea biosynthesis and general problems of urea synthesis), bear...

Post-translational covalent modifications of glutamate receptors remain a hot topic. Early studies have established that this family of receptors, including almost all ionotropic and metabotropic glutamate receptor subtypes, undergoes active phosphorylation at serine, threonine, or tyrosine residues in their intracellular domains. Recent evidence identifies several glutamate receptor subtypes t...