Octopine
Chemical compound
Octopine is a derivative of the amino acids arginine and alanine. It was the first member of the class of chemical compounds known as opines to be discovered. Octopine gets its name from Octopus octopodia from which it was first isolated in 1927.
Octopine has been isolated from the muscle tissue of invertebrates such as octopus, Pecten maximus and Sipunculus nudus where it functions as an analog of lactic acid. Plants may also produce this compound after infection by Agrobacterium tumefaciens and transfer of the octopine synthesis gene from the bacterium to the plant.
01Biosynthesis
Octopine is formed by reductive condensation of the amino acid, L-arginine, with pyruvic acid through the action of the nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide-dependent enzyme octopine dehydrogenase. The reaction is reversible so that pyruvic acid and arginine can be regenerated. This has the important effect of regulating the amount of the cofactor available as NAD+.
arginine + NADH + pyruvic acid H+ H2O H+ H2O D-octopine + NAD+Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Octopine”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Octopine.svg by Yikrazuul, Public domain
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