Enoylpyruvate Transferase Isozymes in Bacillus megaterium

UDP_GlcNAc is metabolized to form vegetative cell wall, cortical peptidoglycans, and outermost layer consisting of galactosamine-6-phosphate ploysaccharide in life cycle of Bacillus megaterium. To obtain a better understanding of the UDP-GlcNAc regulation, we examined the activity of the common first enzyme for the synthesis of nucleotide precursors of peptidoglycans, enoylpyruvate transferase by newly developed method. Both the specific and the total activity decreased after the end of exponential growth followed by and increase from t5 but decreased again parallel to the appearance of the activity of UDP_GlcNAc-4-epimerase. Antibody specificity to anti-transferase IgG and the elution profile on DEAE-Sepharose revealed that B. megaterium has at least two enoylpyruvate transferase isozymes, and UDP_GlcNAc was metabolized to vegetative cell wall and cortical peptidoglycan by each isozme in exponential growth and in sporulation, respectively in life cycle.