Sp. Chatterjee et al., BIOSYNTHESIS OF LYSINE IN PLANTS - THE PUTATIVE ROLE OF MESO-DIAMINOPIMELATE DEHYDROGENASE, Plant molecular biology, 26(1), 1994, pp. 285-290
Extracts from Chlamydomonas, corn, soybean and tobacco were tested for
enzymes of the lysine biosynthetic pathway. Dihydrodipicolinic acid (
DHD) synthase, DHD reductase, diaminopimelate (DAP) epimerase and DAP
decarboxylase were present in all. However, in contrast to the report
of Wenko et al., meso-DAP dehydrogenase could not be detected in extra
cts prepared from soybean. Moreover, it was not found in Chlamydomonas
, corn and tobacco as well. In order to set an upper limit to the amou
nt of meso-DAP dehydrogenase that might be present, reconstruction exp
eriments were performed with soybean and corn extracts in which the co
nversion of dihydrodipicolinate to lysine was made dependent on the ad
dition of limited amounts of the meso-DAP dehydrogenase purified from
Bacillus sphaericus. The presence of DAP epimerase and the absence of
meso-DAP dehydrogenase indicates that the meso-DAP dehydrogenase abbre
viated pathway for lysine synthesis is not operative in plants.