The Acetylation of Thrombin

Purified thrombin-C loses its clotting power upon acetylation. The thrombin-E which is produced during the acetylation has approximately twice the proteolytic activity as the original thrombin-C. Evidently amino groups are not necessary to have thrombin-E activity, but if o-acyl groups are also produced the enzyme does not hydrolyze p-toluenesulphonylarginine methyl ester (TAMe). The activity can be recovered by spontaneous hydrolysis of the o-acyl groups at pH 8.5. Thrombin-E does not activate fibrinogen, but does lyse fibrin. The optimum pH with TAMe as substrate is 8.8. It may be that thrombin-C is a dimer of the basic structure in thrombin-E.