Non-essential activation of rat liver porphobilinogen-deaminase by folic acid.

This report demonstrates the ability of folic acid to activate rat liver porphobilinogen-deaminase (PBG-D). Lineweaver-Burk analysis revealed an increase in Vmax (38%) without affecting the Km. In the concentration range assayed, secondary replots of 1/delta slope and 1/delta intersect versus 1/[folic acid] yielded straight lines, indicating the binding of a single molecule of activator to the enzyme PBG-D, with a KA = 1.66 mM. Results presented here show that folic acid acts as a non-essential activator (alpha = 1; beta = 1.6). The activating effect of folic acid has been observed employing the 35-70% ammonium sulphate precipitated fraction, desalted by dialysis or gel filtration, whereas no action was detected when other partially purified PBG-D preparations were utilized as the enzyme source, suggesting either the presence of sites saturated for the activator, or the existence of a different structural protein conformation, or both.