Tubulinyl‐tyrosine Carboxypeptidase from Chicken Brain: Properties and Partial Purification

Abstract

Tyrosine can be released from tubulinyl-tyrosine by the action of a brain carboxypeptidase. The molecular weight of this enzyme found by gel filtration through a column of Sephadex G-200 was 90,000. The enzyme was very unstable in a purified preparation in which the activity per milligram of protein was increased 250-fold with respect to the starting material. The precise magnitude of the purification cannot be stated because of the unknown amount of endogenous tubulinyl-tyrosine in the material to be assayed. A comparative study was done between tubulinyl-tyrosine carboxypeptidase (TTCP) activity and pancreatic carboxypeptidase A (CPA, EC 3.4.12.2) activity using tubulinyl-[¹⁴C]tyrosine as substrate. The most remarkable differences found are: MgCl₂ (2 mM), phenyl acetate (10 mM), or EDTA (5 mM) increased the TTCP activity whereas the CPA activity was strongly inhibited by these compounds, lodoacetate (2 mM) and ZnCl₂ (0.1 mM) inhibited the TTCP activity more than the CPA activity. Contrarily, mercaptoethanol (50 mM) and dimethyl sulfoxide (5%) showed a stronger inhibitory effect on CPA than on TTCP. Of several N-carbobenzoxy dipeptides (Z-dipeptides) tested the greatest inhibitory effects on TTCP activity were obtained with Z-Glu-Tyr and Z-Glu-Phe, although strong inhibitory effects on CPA were also obtained with other Z-dipeptides.