Substrate and inhibitor specificity of glutamine cyclotransferase (QC).

This paper reports a systematic study of the substrate and inhibitor specificity of papaya latex glutamine cyclotransferase (QC). The results showed that the second amino acid residue in N-terminal glutaminyl peptides significantly accelerated papaya latex QC-catalyzed reactions while the third residue provided no further rate enhancement. Substrate binding was shown to be the main specificity-determining step. Fifteen proline derivatives and dipeptides containing an N-terminal proline were tested and found to inhibit papaya latex QC. This supports our previous molecular modeling study of the QC catalytic pathway which suggested a structure of the reaction intermediates similar to that of L-proline.