Abstract
β-Galactosyl-pyrrolidinyl diazeniumdiolates (β-Gal-NONOate) is a new site-specific nitric oxide (NO)-releasing compound, which releases NO once activated by β-galactosidase. In the present experiment, we used β-Gal-NONOate as a bactericidal reagent to investigate its effectiveness of NO releasing. Through the evaluation of intracellular NO level and the comparison of survival of E. coli transformed with lacZ gene but treated with β-Gal-NONOate and NONOate, respectively, it's evident that β-Gal-NONOate had a higher bactericidal activity than conventional NONOate. While either β-Gal-NONOate- or NONOate-treated E. coli without transferred lacZ gene showed low bactericidal activity. The results revealed that β-Gal-NONOate was a potentially efficient NO donor, which took on a novel and promising approach to deliver NO into cells.
