Search

Products of bovine prothrombin acylation by citraconic anhydride, modified to 20--90% have been obtained. Disc-electrophoresis in polyacrylamide gel in the presence of sodium dodecyl sulfate has shown that the citraconylation of prothrombin is accompanied with spontaneous activation, resulting in formation of products with molecular weights identical to those of neoprothrombin C, neoprothrombin T, profragment and fragments A and C. Spontaneous activation upon the citraconylation is never completely recovered: the reaction products always contain a fraction, corresponding in molecular weight to prothrombin. Citraconylation products possess neither coagulating, nor esterase activity. Generation of esterase activity requires the presence of an enzyme--factor Xa, which splits the 323-324 peptide bond (Arg-Ile) in the molecules of prothrombin and intermediate products of its activation. The mechanism of activation of citraconylated prothrombin products by factor Xa does not differ from the mechanism of native prothrombin activation by the enzyme. The esterase activity, which is generated after the incubation with factor Xa, is due to the building of citraconylthrombin and partly of the native thrombin; the latter may be formed at the low degree of prothrombin modification.

Acylation of bovine prothrombin by cytraconic anhydride results in the formation of the thrombin active site, which provides the degradation of highly specific thrombin substrate, N-bensoyl-Phe-Val-Arg p-nitroanilide. This reaction is inhibited with hirudin, highly specific thrombin inhibitor.