T. Kamiryo, M. Matsuhashi
Oct 10, 1972
Citations
1
Influential Citations
39
Citations
Journal
The Journal of biological chemistry
Abstract
Abstract The biosynthesis of pentaglycine, the cross-linking peptide in the cell wall peptidoglycan of Staphylococcus aureus, requires glycyl-tRNA as a donor of glycine. The pentaglycine is introduced by sequential addition of glycine from glycyltRNA to the e-amino group of the l-lysine residue of the pentapeptide in the lipid-linked precursor. The direction of elongation of the pentaglycine chain is from the NH2 terminus, in contrast to that found in protein synthesis. The enzyme catalyzing the formation of pentaglycine has been purified 100-fold and the RNA content of the partially purified enzyme was 1%. The tentative molecular weight was 2 x 105, determined by sucrose density gradient centrifugation. These results suggest that ribosomes do not take part in the synthesis of pentaglycine. No evidence for a multicomponent activity for the synthesis of pentaglycine was found at this step of the purification.