Thermolysin Is a Suitable Protease for Probing the Surface of Intact Pea Chloroplasts

Abstract
Several proteases, i.e., pronase, a mixture of trypsin and chymotrypsin, and thermolysin were screened as potential surface probes of isolated intact pea chloroplasts. Of these, only thermolysin met the criteria of a suitable probe. Thermolysin destroyed outer envelope polypeptides, but did not affect inner envelope polypeptides, envelope permeability properties or such chloroplast activities as metabolite transport and O2 evolution.