FUNCTIONAL-STUDIES OF A GLUTAMATE-DEHYDROGENASE WITH KNOWN 3-DIMENSIONAL STRUCTURE - STEADY-STATE KINETICS OF THE FORWARD AND REVERSE REACTIONS CATALYZED BY THE NAD+-DEPENDENT GLUTAMATE-DEHYDROGENASE OF CLOSTRIDIUM-SYMBIOSUM

Steady-state kinetic properties of glutamate dehydrogenase from Clostridium symbiosum are reported. Rates with NADP(H) are over three hundred times lower than with NAD(H) under identical conditions. The 3-acetyl pyridine and 6-deamino adenine analogues of NAD+, on the other hand, are used almost as well as NAD+ itself Amino acid specificity is very tight at both pH 7 and pH 9. The best alternative substrate of those tested, L-alpha-amino-gamma-nitraminobutyrate, gave only 0.5% of the rate seen with glutamate. With 400-mu-M NAD+ a 160-fold variation of the glutamate concentration gave a linear Eadie plot apart from slight inhibition at the highest concentrations. With 40 mM L-glutamate and varied [NAD+], the Eadie plot appeared linear between 1.6-mu-M and 60-mu-M and again between 60-mu-M and 2000-mu-M, but the slopes of the two lines differed by a factor of 8.4. This striking pattern is not attributable to impurities in the coenzyme or to changes in the state of aggregation of the enzyme. For the high concentration range (> 60-mu-M NAD+), the presence of all four linear terms in the reciprocal form of the initial rate equation indicates a sequential mechanism. Similar measurements made for APAD+ and dnNAD+ show no sign of non-linearity in the Eadie plot over the wide concentration ranges explored. In the reductive amination direction, with NADH as coenzyme, linear reciprocal plots were obtained for all three substrates. Systematic variation of concentrations led via primary, secondary and tertiary plots to all eight possible initial-rate parameters in a linear reciprocal initial-rate equation. Compulsory-order and enzyme-substitution mechanisms appear to be excluded, and a random route to the central complex seems the only possibility compatible with the results.