Characterization of hydroperoxides and carbonyl compounds obtained by lipoxygenase extracts of selected microorganisms.

Partially purified lipoxygenase (LOX) extracts were obtained from Fusarium proliferatum, Fusarium oxysporum, Chlorella pyrenoidosa, and Saccharomyces cerevisiae; the enzymatic extract of F. proliferatum showed the highest LOX activity while those of F. oxysporum and S. cerevisiae demonstrated only 27.8 and 16.5% of the activity at pH 8.0, and 61.2 and 9.7% of the enzyme activity at pH 10.0, respectively. The lowest LOX activity was that in the C. pyrenoidosa extract. The microbial enzymatic preparations were assayed with linoleic acid as substrate, which was bioconverted into 9- and 13-hydroperoxides (HPODEs) by all four extracts; in addition, the LOX activity in the F. oxysporum extract produced the 10- and 12-HPODEs from linoleic acid while that of the C. pyrenoidosa extract produced only the 10-HPODE. When assayed with the 9- and 13-HPODEs as substrates, the selected microbial extracts had secondary enzyme activities, one of which produced hexanal. The highest hexanal-producing activity was 1.51 and 1.39 nmol hexanol/mg protein/min in the F. proliferatum and C. pyrenoidosa extracts, respectively, while those of F. oxysporum and S. cerevisiae had approximately 15% of the HPODE-cleaving enzyme activity. The C. pyrenoidosa extract had the highest proportion of pentanone, which was produced at only one-fourth the concentration by the HPODE-cleaving enzyme activity in the three other microbial enzymatic extracts.