Hysteretic nature of phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase isolated from maize

The hysteretic nature of phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase from maize was investigated at pH 7 by (a) transient kinetic studies, (b) kinetics of inhibition by 2-PG, a structural analog of PEP, and (c) effect of 2-PG on equilibrium binding of Mg 2+. The lag time as a function of substrate concentration was nonlinear with an oblique asymptote. During steady state, cooperative kinetics for Mg 2+ was changed to hyperbolic kinetics in the presence of 2-PG. Studies on the equilibrium binding of Mg 2+ with the help of an external fluorescent probe, 8-anilino-6-naphthalinosulfonate showed that the hyperbolic binding of Mg 2+ was changed to cooperative binding in the presence of 2-PG. On the basis of these results along with the results presented in the preceding paper, a fully concerted sequential model with subunit interaction is proposed for PEPC.