l-Arginine inhibits the activity of α-amylase: Rapid kinetics, interaction and functional implications

The “Journey to the West” is one of the four masterpieces of Chinese classical. The whole book describes the story of the four Tang monks and priests who went through all the hardships and finally reached the west to get the truth. We would like to borrow the story of “white dragon horse” in this myth to describe the abstract of the paper. During the journey, a dragon devoured the Tang monk's mounted white horse and dived deep into the bottom of the sea. Although the apprentice of the Tang monk, Sun Wukong’s martial arts are strong, he could not directly dive to catch the dragon because of the geographical danger. All he could do was to stir the deep sea violently. The dragon could not stand the violent stirring of the water flow and had to float out of the water to fight, and finally was defeated by Sun Wukong. Eventually, the dragon willingly became a loyal mount of the Tang monk - the white dragon horse. In this graphic abstract, amylase is like that the dragon and L-arginine is like Sun Wukong's gold hoop stick. Dragons are usually wrapped around an ornamental column in the sea, like enzyme folding structures. In this research, L-arginine did not act directly with PPA, but to disturb the water, so that the hydrogen bond structure of the water was destroyed, and finally forced the amylase to unfold and therefore the enzyme activity was inhibited. This process is like Sun Wukong using a gold hoop stick, stirring water to force the dragon to leave the ornamental column in the sea and surrender.