Abstract
MOST animal tissues and body fluids contain two types of cholinesterase which have been designated as true cholinesterase and pseudocholinesterase in accordance with their physiological function1. Both enzymes are inhibited to about the same extent by low concentrations of eserine as well as of prostigmine. In order to measure the activities of the two enzymes separately in a mixture of both, Mendel et al. 2 used what they considered to be ‘specific substrates’: acetyl-β-methylcholine for the true cholinesterase and benzoylcholine for the pseudocholinesterase. Since the sera and tissues of ruminants do not exhibit appreciable eserine-sensitive activity towards benzoylcholine, it had been assumed that they do not possess any pseudocholinesterase3. However, it has recently been found that the spleen of the ox4 and other tissues of ruminants5 contain enzymes capable of hydrolysing butyrylcholine, an ester which is hydrolysed rapidly by the pseudocholinesterases of other species but not by the true cholinesterases6.
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MENDEL, B., MYERS, D. Identification of Pseudocholinesterase in the Tissues of Ruminants. Nature 176, 783–784 (1955). https://doi.org/10.1038/176783b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/176783b0
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