ON A REVERSIBLE MOLYBDENUM-CONTAINING ALDEHYDE OXIDOREDUCTASE FROM CLOSTRIDIUM-FORMICOACETICUM

Clostridium formicoaceticum grown in the presence of 1 mM molybdate and about 1.5 x 10(-5) mM tungsten (present in the 5 g yeast extract/1 of the growth medium) forms two reversible aldehyde oxidoreductases in an activity ratio of about 45: 55. The fraction of 45% does not bind to the octyl-Sepharose column, whereas the 55% aldehyde oxidoreductase binds to this column. From cells grown on a synthetic medium without the addition of tungstate only about 2% of the aldehyde oxidoreductase of the crude extract binds to octyl-Sepharose. The enzyme not binding to octyl-Sepharose has been purified as judged by electrophoresis. It is pure after about 50 fold enrichment. According to SDS gel electrophoresis the enzyme consists of identical 100 kD subunits. Based on gel chromatography it seems to be a trimer. Per subunit 0.6 molybdenum, 7 iron, 6.6 acid labile sulphur, about 0.1 pterin-6-carboxylic and <0.05 tungsten have been found. The first 13 amino acids from the amino end show no similarity with the W-containing aldehyde oxidoreductase from the same bacterium. With reduced tetramethylviologen (E0' = -550 mV) the new molybdenum containing enzyme can reduce various aliphatic and aromatic acids to aldehydes. The pH optimum is at 6.0. For the dehydrogenation of butyraldehyde a rather broad pH region from pH 6 to 10 shows almost no variation of rate. From 15 different aldehydes acetaldehyde exhibits the highest rate. The K(m) value for butanal is 0.002 and for propionate 7.0 mM. Compared with the tungsten enzyme the molybdenum enzyme is only moderately oxygen-sensitive.