Methanol-grown Amycolatopsis methanolica NCIB 11946 contains a molybdoprotein dehydrogenase, active with aldehydes and formate esters as substrates and with Wurster's blue as electron acceptor, the so-called formate ester dehydrogenase (FEDH) (van Ophem et al., 1992, Eur. J. Biochem. 206, 519-525). It appears now that another molybdoprotein dehydrogenase is present in this organism. This enzyme, indicated here as dye-linked aldehyde dehydrogenase (DL-AlDH), has the same set of cofactors and converts the same type of substrates but with different specificity, and uses 2,6-dichlorophenol-indophenol as sole artificial electron acceptor for those conversions. The enzymes also differ in their quaternary structure, FEDH having an alpha, beta, gamma and DL-AlDH having an alpha, beta, gamma 2 composition. Furthermore, differences exist with respect to the sizes and the N-terminal amino acid sequences of their subunits, indicating that the enzymes derive from different genes. However, neither their substrate specificity nor their induction pattern give a clear indication for distinct physiological roles. Just like other bacterial molybdoprotein dehydrogenases, DL-AlDH consists of three different subunits (87, 35, and 17 kDa) and contains FAD, molybdopterin-cytosine-dinucleotide cofactor, Fe, and acid-labile sulfide in a molar ratio of 1:1:4:4. Although eukaryotic xanthine oxidase and dehydrogenase differ from these prokaryotic dehydrogenases in size and number of their subunits, certain stretches of amino acid sequences show similarity and the magnetic coupling between the Mo and the [2Fe-2S]-1 cluster in DL-AlDH and bovine milk xanthine oxidase is of the same magnitude. In view of this similarity, the topology of the cofactors in the active site of this type of molybdoproteins might be conserved among enzymes from prokaryotic as well as eukaryotic organisms.