亜鉛酵素

とくにアルコール脱水素酵素について

抄録

The history of the study of zinc enzymes and their characteristics and the classification are briefly surveyed, together with the general remarks on the structure and function of metals in metalloenzymes. Among about 90 zinc enzymes so far discovered, special emphasis is placed on horse liver alcohol dehydrogenase and the recent experimental results of UV-VIS spectra, circular dichroism and X-ray crystallography are presented. The M. W. of horse liver alcohol dehydrogenase is 80, 000 and the enzyme consists of two subunits, each of which contains two zinc atoms, and 2 mols of NAD⁺ is necessary as cofactor for the enzyme. The details of the structure and the function of zinc in the enzyme are discussed and the possible reaction mechanism is explained. The paper also briefly introduces the recently extracted human liver alcohol dehydrogenase.