Combined extracellular sucrolytic enzyme power from a strain of Streptococcus mutans, and purification results.

Streptococcus mutans has been shown to produce extracellular invertase, dextransucrase, and levansucrase. The purpose of this work was to study the relative quantities of these enzymes in pure culture supernatant, and in samples from commonly used purification methods. The strain "Ingbritt" was selected because it is a well-defined human strain, available, and with well-known growth requirements. The samples were incubated with sucrose for the determination of free monohexoses, and the polysaccharide from ethanol precipitation was hydrolyzed as previously described. In cell supernatant the inversion effect exerted 75% of total sucrolytic power, the dextransucrase 20% and the levansucrase 5%. No method, tested in this work, could separate all the activities completely.