Clostridium sticklandii utilizes combinations of amino acids for growth by Stickland reactions. Proline is an efficient electron acceptor in these reactions and is reduced to 5-aminovalerate. Proline can be partly synthesized from ornithine by the action of ornithine aminotransferase and A1-pyrroline-5-carboxylate (PCA) reductase. Both enzymes were present in crude extracts of C. sticklandii in sufficient activity of 0.93 nkat (mg protein)-l and 4 3 nkat (mg protein)'l, respectively, whereas enzymes involved in proline biosynthesis from glutamate were not detected. PCA reductase was purified t o homogeneity in a three-step procedure involving ammonium sulfate precipitation, affinity chromatography with Procion Red and gel filtration on Sephadex GF2OO. The homogeneous enzyme was most likely an octamer of 230 kDa with a subunit size of 25 kDa as obtained by SDS-PAGE and 28.9 kDa as calculated from the sequence. Apparent Km values for PCA and NADH were 019 mM and 0025 mM, respectively. The enzyme also catalysed in vitro the reverse reaction, the oxidation of proline, at alkaline pH values above 8 and higher substrate concentrations (apparent Km values: 1-55 mM for proline and 10-5 mM for NAD at pH 10-0). Studies with growing cells of C. sticklandii and [15N]proline revealed that proline is not oxidized in vivo because 15N was solely detected by HPLC-MS in 5-aminovalerate as the product of proline reduction. The proC gene encoding PCA reductase of C. sticklandii was cloned, sequenced and heterologously expressed in Escherichia coli. The enzyme exhibited high homologies to PCA reductases from different sources. Thus, C. sticklandii is able to synthesize the electron acceptor proline from ornithine (a degradation product of arginine) by action of ornithine aminotransferase and PCA reductase.

For the development of gene therapy protocols based on polyomavirus-like particles, we describe a method for fluorescence labelling of virions in order to study virus-cell interactions preceding gene delivery. Site-specific fluorescence labelling of polyomavirus-like particles is achieved via a single cysteine residue and maleimide conjugates of fluorescence dyes (fluorescein, Texas Red). Polyomavirus-like particles can be assembled in vitro from recombinant capsomers produced in E. coli. Since the assembly process is independent of disulfide bond formation, all cysteine residues of the wild-type protein were replaced by serines, and a new unique cysteine residue was introduced for the attachment of the fluorescence marker.

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