Enzymic hydrolysis of sphingomyelins by a toxin of Corynebacterium ovis

Corynebacterium diphtheriae and Its Relatives1

“…Soucek described a sphingomyelinase associated with ovis extracts. About this, one would like to see more data (283). The walls of ovis strains are similar to those of C. diphtheriae.…”

Lateral gene transfer of a dermonecrotic toxin between spiders and bacteria

“…The single venom toxin sphingomyelinase D (SMaseD) causes the complete dermonecrotic syndrome in animal models (Fernandes-Pedrosa et al, 2002;Ramos-Cerillo et al, 2004;Tambourgi et al, 2004). SMaseD activity has not been found elsewhere in the animal kingdom or in any other organisms except bacterial pathogens in the genus Corynebacteria (Soucek et al, 1967). Spider and bacterial SMa-seDs are similar in molecular weight and isoelectric focusing point (Bernheimer et al, 1985;Truett and King, 1993) as well as enzyme kinetics and substrate specificities (van Meeteren et al, 2004) hinting that they may be related by common ancestry.…”

Sake (Rice Wine) Brewing Hydrolyzes Highly Polar Sphingolipids to Ceramides and Increases Free Sphingoid Bases

“…We found that during brewing, HPS containing GIPC was dramatically eliminated. It has long been known that plants and fungi have phospholipase D activity, which can produce C1P from GIPC 29,30 . However, C1P and SB1P could not be detected in sake lees, and levels of Cer and free SBs were markedly increased in sake lees compared to those in total rice used Tables 2 and 5 .…”