Question

If you ran a deaminate phenylalanine test, how would you know that an increase in pH was due to deamidation and not decarboxylation?

Answer 1

Answer:

• During decarboxylation when a decarboxylase breaks the bond holding the carboxylic group (-COOH), from that of the amino acid, the resulting product will rise the pH up.
• At the same time during deamidation, when deaminase removes the amino groups, the produced compound will decrease the pH of the environment.
• If the bacteria is having Phenylalanine deaminase enzyme, it will remove the amino group from Phenylalanine and forms the Phenylpyruvic acid.
• This only happens when you run the deaminate phenylalanine test, where the phenyl deaminase by using FeCl3 as the reagent will going to react with phenyl pyruvic acid which has formed form the breakdown of phenylalanine.
• Here FeCl3 is used as an indicator, positive test will turn the FeCl3 into green color, negative test will keep the FeCl3 as yellow color.
• So, if there is an increase in pH-it is only due to decarboxylation
• If there is a decrease in pH- it is only due to deamidation

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