Transaminases in Smooth Brucella Abortus, Strain 19

Goodlow et al.(1) clearly demonstrated that the establishment of nonsmooth variants in originally smooth virulent cultures of Bruce&x species grown in Gerhardt-Wilson synthetic medium (2) is concurrent with the appearance of alanine in the medium.Previous work in this laboratory (3) has shown that a considerable amount of alanine is produced by a glutamate to pyruvate transamination reaction by strain 19 of Brucella abortus.The data reported in this paper show that in sonic extracts of this organism there is a variety of transaminases.Evidence has been obtained for the presence of transaminases which catalyze amino transfer from leucine, isoleucine, norleucine, or phenylalanine to pyruvate without proceeding through glutamic acid.Although glutamic acid participates in all transaminases that have been studied extensively (4), the work of Rowsell ( 5) and the present paper offer evidence that there are transaminases which do not involve glutamate.In addition, sonic extracts of this organism contain transaminases which transfer amino groups to cr-ketoglutarate from the four amino acids mentioned above.EXPERIMENTAL