Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
The properties of CMP-N acetylneuraminic acid: glycoprotein sialyltransferase have been studied in pork serum, a crude pork liver homogenate, and a soluble acetone powder extract prepared from pork liver. Whereas the crude liver homogenate enzyme is activated by the detergent Triton X-100, this detergent has no effect on the activities of either serum or acetone powder extract; since high-speed centrifugation does not sediment the enzyme activities of the latter two preparations, it is concluded that they are soluble. Comparison of the membrane-bound and soluble liver enzymes indicates that the membrane modifies kinetic behavior only to a limited extent. In both liver and serum, a single sialyltransferase is responsible for incorporation of sialic acid into α 1 -acid glycoprotein, fetuin, and N-acetyllactosamine, and sialic acid incorporation occurs whenever a terminal galactose linked (β, 1 → 4) to a penultimate N-acetylglucosamine is presented to the enzyme. Although the serum enzyme resembles the liver enzyme, both the source and function of serum sialyltransferase are unknown.
Hudgin et al. (Thu,) studied this question.