SummaryWe have shown that urinary urea excretion decreased in rats fed a low gluten diet supplemented with dietary limiting amino acids. The purpose of present study was to determine whether the addition of dietary limiting amino acids to a low gluten diet affected the synthesis and degradation of N -acetylglutamate and regulated urea synthesis. Experiments were done on two groups of rats, given diets containing 10% gluten or 10% gluten ϩ 0.5% L -lysine, 0.2% L -threonine and 0.2% L -methionine for 10 d. The urinary excretion of urea, and the liver concentration of N -acetylglutamate, and the liver activity of N -acetylglutamate synthetase decreased with the addition of dietary L -lysine, L -threonine and L -methionine. N -Acetylglutamate concentration in the liver was closely correlated with the N -acetylglutamate synthetase activity in the liver and excretion of urea. The greater degradation of N -acetylglutamate was observed in the group fed the 10% gluten ϩ L -lysine, L -threonine and L -methionine. The hepatic concentration of glutamate and plasma concentration of arginine were not related to the N -acetylglutamate concentration in the liver. These results suggest that the addition of limiting amino acids to the low gluten diet controls the synthesis and degradation of N -acetylglutamate in the liver and lowers urea synthesis. Key Words dietary limiting amino acids, urea synthesis, N -acetylglutamate synthesis, Nacetylglutamate degradation, rats Schimke ( 1 , 2 ) has suggested that the concentrations of urea-cycle intermediates were unchanged under conditions affecting the rate of urea excretion (e.g., ingestion of a high-protein diet) and concluded that the activities of various urea-cycle enzymes were regulatory factors of urea synthesis. However, many investigators have previously reported that there was an increase in urinary urea excretion without a comparable increase in the enzyme activities when a diet containing high quality protein was replaced by an isonitrogenous diet with low quality protein ( 3-6 ).We demonstrated that urinary excretion of urea increased with a 10% casein diet and still more with a 10% gluten diet as compared with a 10% whole egg protein diet ( 5 ). Gluten is known to be a lower quality protein than whole egg protein because of deficiency in lysine ( 7 ). The concentrations of threonine and sulfur amino acids in gluten are also lower than in whole egg protein. In a previous study ( 8 ), the activities of argininosuccinate synthetase and carbamylphosphate synthetase, urea cycle enzymes, were not affected by the dietary addition of L -lysine, L -threonine and L -methionine to a low gluten diet, while supplementation with these dietary limiting amino acids to a gluten diet decreased urea excretion.Substrate availability normally may limit the rate of urea synthesis ( 9 ). Urea formation has been shown to be stimulated by adding N -acetylglutamate in perfused liver ( 10-12 ) and in isolated hepatocytes ( 13 ) when substrates for urea production were present in excess. Thus, at lea...