Enzymic dephosphorylation of pepsin and pepsinogen.

It has been shown by the work presented in this paper that it is possible to dephosphorylate enzymically pepsin and pepsinogen with a variety of phosphatases. With the aid of a phosphodiesterase and the prostate phosphatase it has been established that the phosphorus in the two proteins is present as a diester and connects two sites of the peptide chain in a cyclic configuration. Removal of the phosphorus does not affect the proteolytic activity against hemoglobin or the synthetic substrate acetyl-L-phenylalanyl diiodotryosine, nor the pepsinogen pepsin transformation. However, an increase of the autodigestion of pepsin is observed.