Immunochemical studies on hen's egg-white lysozyme. The role of the lysine, the histidine and the methionine residues.

Abstract

By specific chemical modification of amino acid residues of egg white lysozyme it is demonstrated that the carbamylation of the α amino group and carboxymethylation of the unique histidine residue do not affect the reaction of the enzyme with the anti‐lysozyme antibodies.In contrast, it appears from this work that carbamylation or acetylation of the ɛ amino groups, carboxymethylation of the methionine residues as well as CNBr cleavage of the polypeptide chain do alterate the antigenic structure of lysozyme.