Purification, Properties and Function of N-Hydroxyarylamine O- Acetyltransferase

Among numbers of environmental or chemical carcinogens, those which are contained in daily foods can be regarded as the most causative factors of cancers. Thus, the discovery of mutagens/carcinogens in the pyrolysis products of amino acids and proteins was a striking matter. Some of the promutagens isolated so far induce remarkable numbers of revertants when incubated with Salmonella typhimurium TA98 bacterial cells in the presence of 9,000 xg supernatant fraction of liver homogenates of PCB-treated rats with cofactors. The specific mutagenicity of some of promutagens represented as the number of revertants per μg of a promutagen, reaches to levels 1000 times as high as benzo(a)pyrene.