dehydrase

Formed as de- + hydr- +‎ -ase, by analogy with the German Dehydrase.

• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: dēhīʹdrāz, dēhīʹdrās, IPA^(key): /diːˈhaɪdɹeɪz/, /diːˈhaɪdɹeɪs/

dehydrase (plural dehydrases)

1. (biochemistry, disused) dehydrogenase
   • 1914, Chemical Abstracts, volume 8, page 3,051:

     It is shown by means of a typical dehydrase, Schardinger’s milk enzyme, that oxidase, reductase and mutase are 1 and the same enzyme.

   • 1939, Sir Thomas Edward Thorpe, A Dictionary of Applied Chemistry [4th ed.], volume 3, page 553, column 2

     Citric acid dehydrase is present in the liver and in vegetable material acting on citric acid.

   • 1959, N. Campbell [contrib.] and Ernest Harry Rodd [ed.], Chemistry of Carbon Compounds, volume 4B, chapter 8, page 942

     Freudenberg also postulates a second process whereby catechins in the presence of dehydrases undergo condensation by dehydrogenation.

2. (biochemistry, disused) dehydratase
   • 1953, Advances in Enzymology, volume 14, page 243:

     The usual English term ‘dehydrase’ for an enzyme dehydrating a substrate was changed to dehydratase, because Dehydrase in German…means a dehydrogenating enzyme rather than an enzyme splitting off water.

   • 1957, Journal of General Microbiology, volume 16, page 480:

     The enzymic dehydration of tartaric acid to oxaloacetic acid, first established…for the d-isomer, occurs also with the meso- and l-isomers, and the attack on all three tartaric acids by bacteria of the genus Pseudomonas appears to occur principally by means of stereospecific dehydrases.

• The polysemic term dehydrase has been superseded by the more specific terms dehydrogenase and dehydratase since its proscription by the IUBMB in 1961.[1]

• “dehydrase” listed in the Oxford English Dictionary [2nd ed., 1989]