Poly(ethyleneglyco1)-bound NAD (PEG-NAD) was covalently linked to Thermus thermophilus malate dehydrogendse with a bifunctional reagent, 3,3'-(1,6-dioxo-1,6-hexanediyl)bis-2-thiazolidinethione. The covalently linked malate-dehydrogenase -PEG -NAD complex (MDH-PEG-NAD) was purified by DEAE-Sephadex column chromatography to remove unbound PEG-NAD, and fractionated by blue-Sepharose column chromatography into four preparations: MDH-PEG-NAD I, MDH-PEG-NAD 11, MDH-PEG-NAD 111 and MDH-PEG-NAD IV. The average numbers of NAD moieties covalently bound per subunit of MDH-PEG-NAD I, MDH-PEG-NAD 11, MDH-PEG-NAD I11 and MDH-PEG-NAD IV were 1.2, 1.2, 0.8 and 0.5, respectively, and the values were confirmed by sodium dodecyl sulfate/polydcrylamide gel electrophoresis. 60 -80% bound NAD moiety of these preparations of MDH-PEG-NAD was reduced by the enzyme moiety in the presence of Lmalate, and the specific activity of the enzyme moiety of the preparations was more than 80% that of the native enzyme.MDH-PEG-NAD I has the following properties. The K , value for exogeneous NAD is three times that of the native enzyme. The coenzyme activity of its NAD moiety is 20-40% that of native NAD for alcohol and lactate dehydrogenases. The complex catalyzes the oxidation of L-malate in the presence of the redox system of 5-ethylphenazinium ethyl sulfate and a tetrazolium salt with a rate constant of 0.11 s-l. The coenzyme moiety of the complex can also be recycled by coupled reactions of the active site of the same complex and alcohol dehydrogenase. These results indicate that MDH-PEG-NAD works as an NAD(H)-regeneration unit for coupled reactions.A covalently linked dehydrogenase-NAD complex is an attractive catalytic unit if the bound NAD can be used by other enzymes as well as by itself. Such a complex serves as an NAD(H)-regeneration unit in enzyme reactors and also provides many interesting questions about the effects of fixing a readily dissociable coenzyme in the vicinity of an enzyme. Several efforts have been made for this purpose [l -31 but only the alcohol-dehydrogenase -NAD complex, reported by MAnsson et al. [2], has been clearly demonstrated to have covalently bound NAD. As for the complex, recycling of the bound NAD by lactate or malate dehydrogenase [4] and kinetic properties of the alcohol dehydrogenase activity of the complex [5] have also been investigated.We have prepared poly(ethyleneglyco1)-bound NAD (PEG-NAD) as a macromolecular NAD derivative for enzyme reactors [6, 71. PEG-NAD has a unique structure in that one NAD molecule and one amino group are linked with Correspondence to I. Urabe,