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Homogeneous cytosolic aspartate aminotransferase was prepared from chicken muscle. The purification procedure involves heat and ammonium sulfate fractionation, chromatography on ion-exchage cellulose CM-52 and crystallization of the enzyme. A comparison of some properties of aspartate aminotransferases from chicken skeletal muscle and heart has been made. Both enzymes were found identical in terms of their electrophoretic mobility, isoelectric point, pyridoxal phosphate content and the amount of SH-groups.

Aspartate transaminase from chicken heart cytosol was immobilized covalently on activated thiol-Sepharose and digested with trypsin. After washing, the thiol-containing peptides were eluted with 2-mercaptoethanol and further purified by gel-filtration and paper chromatography. Three pure cysteinyl peptides were isolated. One of them may be represented as Ile-(Asp, Met, Cys, Gly, Leu, Thr2)-Lys; this peptide is identical to the fragment comprizing residues 387--395 in the peptide chain of aspartate transaminase from pig heart cytosol. It thus contains a cysteine residue homologous to Cys-390 of the pig heart enzyme. The second cysteinyl peptide had the following composition and partial sequence: Tyr-Phe-Val-Ser-Glu-Gly-Phe-Glu-Leu-Phe (Cys, Ala, Glu, Ser2, Phe)Lys, which corresponds to the sequence 242--258 of the pig enzyme and thus contains a cysteine residue homologous to Cys-252. The third cysteinyl peptide was similar to the tryptic peptide of the pig enzyme containing Cys-191.