Selenium and Rabbit Skeletal Muscle Aldolase and Myosin. ∗

Abstract

Summary

Injection of rabbits with sublethal, sub-toxic amounts of Selenium-7 5 resulted in the incorporation of selenium into the muscle protein myosin and aldolase. About a third of the muscle Selenium-75 under conditions of our experiments was present in the protein myosin. Myosin isolated from the muscle of animals not treated with selenium contained 22.7 μg selenium per gram myosin and aldolase from animals not treated with selenium contained 12.6 μg selenium per gram. This quantity plus the amount incorporated in the experiments amounts to considerably less than 1 mole Se per mole myosin or per mole aldolase. This, coupled with the observation that selenium between 10^-2 M and 10^-6 M has no effect on catalytic activity of these enzymes, suggests that this trace element does not play a role in the action of these enzymes.