Competitive Spectrophotometry for Microbial Dipeptide Transport Systems

Portage kinetic constants of peptide transport can be measured by competitive spectrophotometry. The kinetic constants of L-Glu-L-Glu transport in Escherichia coli were ascertained using L-Phe-L-3-thia-Phe (PSP) as a detector. Since the production of thiophenol upon intracellular hydrolysis of PSP was competitively inhibited by L-Glu-L-Glu, it was able to compute the kinetic constants of L-Glu-L-Glu using this method. The resulted data were in agreement with the values obtained by the method of Michaelis-Menten kinetics. The potential of this method was examined against dipeptide transport systems in various microorganisms. These results strongly suggest that the overall properties of individual systems for dipeptide transports can be easily characterized by competitive spectrophotometry.