Degradation of certain nucleotides by Haemophilus influenzae and Haemophilus aegyptius.

Little attention has been paid to the degradation of nucleotides by the genus Haemophilus although Lwoff and Lwoff (1937a, b) and McIlwain and Hughes (1948) demonstrated that Haemophilus parainfluenzae was capable of destroying diphosphopyridine nucleotide (DPN). More recently, Kalckar (1954) reported the occurrence of a specific nucleotide pyrophosphatase and associated nucleotide phosphatase in sonic extracts of Haemophilus influenzae which hydrolyzed uridine diphosphoglucose to glucose 1-phosphate, uridine, and inorganic phosphate. The present work demonstrates that in addition to uridine diphosphoglucose, several other nucleotides, including DPN, are degraded by sonic extracts of H. influenzae and Haemophilus aegyptius.