Authors: Nataly del P Contreras Claudio C Vásquez
Publish Date: 2010/09/07
Volume: 192, Issue: 11, Pages: 969-973
Abstract
The soluble tellurium oxyanion tellurite is toxic for most organisms At least in part tellurite toxicity involves the generation of oxygenreactive species which induce an oxidative stress status that damages different macromolecules with DNA lipids and proteins as oxidation targets The objective of this work was to determine the effects of tellurite exposure upon the Escherichia coli pyruvate dehydrogenase PDH complex The complex displays two distinct enzymatic activities pyruvate dehydrogenase that oxidatively decarboxylates pyruvate to acetylCoA and tellurite reductase which reduces tellurite Te4+ to elemental tellurium Teo PDH complex components AceE AceF and Lpd become oxidized upon tellurite exposure as a consequence of increased carbonyl group formation When the individual enzymatic activities from each component were analyzed AceE and Lpd did not show significant changes after tellurite treatment AceF activity dihydrolipoil acetyltransferase decreased ~30 when cells were exposed to the toxicant Finally pyruvate dehydrogenase activity decreased 80 while no evident changes were observed in complex′s tellurite reductase activity
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