Urocanase Domain Containing Protein 1 (UROC1)

Catabolism of histidine begins with the conversion of histidine to urocanic acid by histidase (HAL). UROC1, or urocanase (EC 4.2.1.49), catalyzes the second step in histidine catabolism, the metabolism of urocanic acid to formiminoglutamic acid.

Espinos et al. (2009) cloned human UROC1. The deduced protein contains a C-terminal catalytic domain with an evolutionarily conserved catalytic arginine (arg450). UROC1 had an apparent molecular mass of 74.8 kD by SDS-PAGE.Using a spectrophotometric assay, Espinos et al. (2009) demonstrated that purified recombinant UROC1 had robust urocanase activity.Espinos et al. (2009) determined that the UROC1 gene contains 20 exons.