Mechanisms in enzymatic transamination; variables in the spectrophotometric estimation of glutamate-aspartate kinetics.

In order to provide a basis for later study of the reaction of a protein to specific chemical alterations in the living cell, an investigation of the dynamics of the transaminase system was begun by attempting to develop a method of proved reliability, lending itself to rapid observation and a high degree of precision, As such a method has not been available for this system, we wish to report the results of a study of the factors involved in the velocity measurements of the glutamate-aspartate transaminase system by use of ultraviolet spectrophotometry, a technique suggested by Green, Leloir, and Nocito (1) and explored by Cammarata and Cohen (2).