Abstract
It has recently been stated1, and it appears to be generally accepted, that the decomposition of hydrogen peroxide by catalase can only take place in the presence of molecular oxygen. It has been pointed out, however2, that this phenomenon is difficult to understand, since it would be expected that such a strong oxidant as hydrogen peroxide would certainly react with the reduced form of the enzyme according to the scheme proposed1. As this point is of fundamental importance in relation to the mechanism of cellular oxidations in general, we have carried out some critical experiments to test the validity of the hypothesis. Our results have furnished rather unequivocal evidence that the hypothesis is untenable, and we would, therefore, like to report them here.
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References
Keilin, D., and Hartree, E. F., Proc. Roy. Soc., B, 124, 397 (1938).
Oppenheimer, C., and Stern, K. G., “Biological Oxidationâ (The Hague: W. Junk, 1939).
Shapiro, H., J. Cell. Comp. Physiol., 4, 313 (1934).
Harvey, E. N., and Morrison, T. F., J. Gen. Physiol., 6, 13 (1923).
Johnson, F. H., and Harvey, E. N., J. Cell. Comp. Physiol., 11, 213 (1938).
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JOHNSON, F., VAN SCHOUWENBURG, K. Decomposition of Hydrogen Peroxide by Catalase. Nature 144, 634–635 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/144634b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/144634b0
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