NYMC Faculty Publications

Inhibition of Human Glutamine Synthetase by L-Methionine-S,R-Sulfoximine-Relevance to the Treatment of Neurological Diseases

Author Type(s)

Faculty

DOI

10.1007/s11011-013-9439-6

Journal Title

Metabolic Brain Disease

First Page

983

Last Page

989

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

12-1-2014

Department

Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Keywords

Adenosine Triphosphate, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, Animals, Bacterial Proteins, Convulsants, Dogs, Enzyme Inhibitors, Glutamate-Ammonia Ligase, Humans, Kinetics, Methionine Sulfoximine, Nerve Tissue Proteins, Nervous System Diseases, Plant Proteins, Protein Binding, Recombinant Fusion Proteins, Saccharomyces cerevisiae Proteins, Sheep, Species Specificity

Disciplines

Medicine and Health Sciences

Abstract

At high concentrations, the glutamine synthetase inhibitor L-methionine-S,R-sulfoximine (MSO) is a convulsant, especially in dogs. Nevertheless, sub-convulsive doses of MSO are neuroprotective in rodent models of hyperammonemia, acute liver disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and suggest MSO may be clinically useful. Previous work has also shown that much lower doses of MSO are required to produce convulsions in dogs than in primates. Evidence from the mid-20th century suggests that humans are also less sensitive. In the present work, the inhibition of recombinant human glutamine synthetase by MSO is shown to be biphasic-an initial reversible competitive inhibition (K i 1.19 mM) is followed by rapid irreversible inactivation. This K i value for the human enzyme accounts, in part, for relative insensitivity of primates to MSO and suggests that this inhibitor could be used to safely inhibit glutamine synthetase activity in humans.

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