A soluble form of novel glutamate dehydrogenase has been purified from bovine brain. The preparation was homogeneous on sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and composed of six identical subunits having a subunit size of 57,500 Da. The biochemical properties of glutamate dehydrogenase such as N-terminal amino acids sequences, kinetic parameters, amino acids analysis, and optimum pH were examined in both reductive amination of alpha-ketoglutarate and oxidative deamination of glutamate. N-terminal amino acid sequences of the bovine brain enzyme showed the significant differences in the first 5 amino acids compared to other glutamate dehydrogenases from various sources. These results indicate that glutamate dehydrogenase isolated from bovine brain is a novel polypeptide.