I'm doing research on lactose intolerance and am curious if disaccharidases (enzymes that break down disaccharides) require a cofactor or coenzyme to function? Reviews or references would be greatly appreciated.
2 Answers
It seems that beta-glucosidases do not require co-factors but some alpha-glucosidases are co-factor dependent.
Some bacterial alpha-glucosidases (GH4 family) require NAD+ to function (Hall et al., 2009). Thermotoga maritama alpha-glucosidase (GH4 family) requires Mn2+, in addition to NAD+ to function (Lodge et al., 2003). Ferroplasma acidophilum alpha-glucosidase seems to contain iron but its role as a co-factor is not known (Ferrer et al., 2005).
For more information on alpha-glucosidases see BRENDA.
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$\begingroup$ +1 I missed that (although there is a crystal structure with NAD+ that I couldn't find when I was writing It's here. Wierd thing is that apparently the NAD isn't being used as an oxidizing cofactor as it is reported to be unchanged in the reaction. $\endgroup$– DavidJun 20, 2016 at 12:54
Apparently not for lactase and β-galactosidase, as one might expect for this sort of hydrolytic reaction. There are also Wikipedia entries for maltase, sucrase and trehalase with references you can follow up to check yourself.