Abstract
LEACH1 showed that N-acetylneuraminic acid was rapidly metabolized by human saliva and ascribed this to the presence of an inducible aldolase produced by contaminating micro-organisms since such destruction was prevented by the addition of ‘Ledermycin’ or by heating the saliva in boiling water. This appears to be the second step in a process whereby salivary mucoproteins having N-acetylneuraminic acid residues as their non-reducing end groups act as inducer molecules to oral bacteria, producing first a neuraminidase and later an aldolase which cleaves the N-acetylneuraminic acid liberated by the neuraminidase into N-acetylmannosamine and pyruvic acid. Such a sequence has been found by us2 to occur when (α1-glycoprotein, which is present in sputum, is used as an inducer molecule in cultures of Klebsiella aerogenes. We wish to report on the third step whereby N-acetylmannosamine itself is digested.
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References
Leach, S. A., Nature, 199, 486 (1963).
Barker, S. A., Pardoe Grace, I., and Stacey, M., Protides of the Biological Fluids, 11, 284 (1963).
Aminoff, D., Morgan, W. T. J., and Watkins, W. M., Biochem. J., 51, 379 (1952).
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AMIR, S., BARKER, S. & WOODBURY, S. N-Acetylmannosamine Digestion by Human Oral Bacteria. Nature 207, 979 (1965). https://doi.org/10.1038/207979a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/207979a0
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