Occurrence of low molecular weight O-acetylserine sulfhydrylase in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Studies with crude preparations obtained from a cysteine auxotroph of Saccharomyces cerevisiae showed that O-acetylserine sulfhydrylase could be separated from O-acetylhomoserine sulfhydrylase by chromatography on a DEAE-cellulose column and centrifugation in a sucrose density gradient. On the basis of sedimentation distance, the molecular weights of these enzymes were calculated to be about 99,000 and 182,000, respectively. The former did not react with the amino acid substrate of the latter, and vice versa. The wild-type strain was also demonstrated to possess O-acetylserine sulfhydrylase (molecular weight: about 96,000), in addition to a large amount of O-acetylserine-O-acetylhomoserine sulfhydrylase (Yamagata et al. (1974) J. Biochem. 75, 1221).