Studies on bacterial amino-acid decarboxylases

Abstract

Gale (1941) has shown that strains of Cl. welchii, when grown under acid conditions or in the presence of fermentable carbohydrate, decarboxylate -(-)histidine and 1( + )-glutamic acid to histamine and y-aminobutyric acid respectively. In this paper the extraction, purification and properties of 1(-)histidine decarboxylase from a strain of this organism are described.