Flavin enzymes in liver and kidney of rats from birth to weaning

✍ Scribed by Burch, Helen B. ;Lowry, Oliver H. ;De Gubareff, Taisija ;Lowry, Stephen R.

• Publisher: Wiley (John Wiley & Sons)
• Year: 1958
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 360 KB
• Volume: 52
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0095-9898
• DOI: 10.1002/jcp.1030520308

✦ Synopsis

This is a report of the changes during the first weeks of life of the rat in the concentration of three oxidases of kidney and liver. The study was made practicable by the availability of new analytical methods for these enzymes which require but a few milligrams of tissue per analysis (Burch et al., '56). Consequently, a single kidney weighing 25 mg from a newborn rat could be analyzed in duplicate f o r the enzymes, xanthine oxidase, and D-amino acid oxidase, as well as protein and total riboflavin. I n addition the method f o r xanthine oxidase is sufficiently sensitive to measure the low level of activity in liver at birth which escaped detection by earlier methods (Richert et al., '49).

Striking increases were found for the three enzymes from birth to weaning. It was also observed that the livers of the post partum mothers are low in D-amino acid oxidase activity and that the livers of adult females in general contain only about half as much glycolic acid oxidase as the livers of adult male rats.

EXPERIMENTAL

The rats were Sprague-Dawley strain from Holtzman Rat Co., Madison, Wis. Pregnant rats were shipped to this laboratory several days before term. Most analyses were made with litters from mothers fed Purina Dog Chow after arrival. A