Mutation at the am locus of Neurospora crassa

Forty-eight new mutations at the am locus of Neurospora crassa have been characterized. Nineteen mutations were induced by UV; of these, eight were missense, two were frameshifts, two were nonsense, three were deletions and four were unidentified. Twenty-nine mutations were induced with nitrous acid; of these, twenty-one were missense, three were frameshifts, one was nonsense, two were deletions and one was genetically unstable.     

New Mutational Variants of Neurospora Nadp-Specific Glutamate Dehydrogenase

The am locus of Neurospora codes for NADP-dependent glutamate dehydrogenase (GDH). Four new am mutants that produced mutationally altered GDH have been characterized. Mutant am₁₁₉ is a CRM-negative, complementing mutant that maps between am₂ and am₁. The other three mutants are CRM formers that produce varieties of GDH that can be activated by glutamate or succinate. The GDH of am₁₃₀ and am₁₃₁ is similar in terms of activation properties to that of am₃. The GDH of am₁₂₂ requires very high concentrations of dicarboxylate for activity. The mutation in am₁₃₀ maps between am₁₄ and am₂ and resulted in a replacement at residue 75 of the GDH (pro → ser). The mutation in am₁₂₂ maps near am₁₁ and apparently resulted in the replacement of the tryptophan residue at position 389 with an unknown amino acid. The mutation in am₁₃₁ maps between am₂ and am₁.     

An Unstable Allele of the am Locus of NEUROSPORA CRASSA

The mutant strain am126 was isolated, using the direct selection procedure, after nitrous acid mutagenesis. It produced neither measurable NADP-dependent glutamate dehydrogenase (GDH) nor immunologically cross-reacting material. That the am126 strain produced some form of GDH product was shown by the fact that it complemented several other am mutant strains. The GDH formed by complementation between am126 and each of two other am mutants was relatively thermolabile, but could not be distinguished from wild-type GDH formed by electrophoresis in polyacrylamide gels. This, together with the relatively high yield of the complementation enzymes, suggest that the am126 product is a polypeptide chain not grossly abnormal in structure. The spontaneous revertant frequency was between 0.3 and 3 prototrophic revertants per 10(5) live cells. This frequency was at least 40 times greater than that for am19, which had the second highest spontaneous revertant frequency among the mutants tested. Neither meiosis nor mutagenesis increased the revertant frequency, nor did incubation at elevated temperatures lower it. Sixty-eight revertant strains were examined for thermostability of their GHD. All appeared to be identical to wild type. Seven of the revertant strains were also tested for instability with regard to forward mutation to am auxtrophy. None was found to be unstable. Models for the genetic instability of the am126 mutation are discussed.     

Protein tyrosine phosphorylation in response to fertilization

The sea urchin egg contains one or more protein tyrosine kinases which are active during the response of the egg to fertilization. In the present study, we have used an antibody specific for phosphotyrosine to determine which egg proteins are phosphorylated on tyrosine in response to fertilization. Analysis of immunoblots prepared from fertilized and unfertilized eggs revealed that fertilization results in a major increase in the phosphotyrosine content of a 350-kDa egg protein. Increased phosphorylation of this protein was detected as early as 1 min after fertilization, at which time it represented the most prominent phosphotyrosine containing protein in the egg. Tyrosine phosphorylation of this protein was transient however, and after 5 min post-insemination, the protein was dephosphorylated or otherwise degraded. Egg membrane proteins of approximately 40, 75, and 145 kDa were also found to act as substrates for protein tyrosine kinases in vitro, but did not exhibit significant changes in phosphotyrosine content during egg activation.     

pH regulation of an egg cortex tyrosine kinase

Fertilization of the echinoderm egg is known to result in the phosphorylation, on tyrosine, of a high-molecular-weight cortical protein (HMWCP) localized in the egg cortex. Studies using various parthenogenic agents indicate that this phosphorylation event occurs in response to the alkaline shift in cytoplasmic pHi which normally occurs 1 to 2 min after fertilization. In the present study, the purified egg cell surface complex was used as in vitro system to determine whether a small alkaline shift in pH, such as occurs upon fertilization, could stimulate the activity of the egg cortex-associated tyrosine kinase toward endogenous protein substrates. The results demonstrated that the cell surface complex is highly enriched in a tyrosine kinase activity which accounts for the majority of the protein kinase activity in this preparation. The activity of this tyrosine kinase toward the HMWCP and other cortical proteins was highly dependent on pH over the range pH 6.8 to 7.3. This indicates that the fertilization-associated change in cytoplasmic pH would be sufficient to trigger increased tyrosine phosphorylation of the high-molecular-weight cortical protein in vivo. The regulation of tyrosine phosphorylation by small changes in pH represents a novel control mechanism in which a tyrosine protein kinase may act as a pH-sensitive transducer.     

Frameshift mutations affecting the N-terminal sequence of Neurospora NADP-specific glutamate dehydrogenase

A series of ultraviolet light-induced revertants from the mutant am6, mapping at the left-hand (“N-terminal”) end of the structural gene for NADP-specific glutamate dehydrogenase, have been shown to have amino acid substitutions in the N-terminal tryptic peptide. Only a few were found to have the wild-type sequence; the great majority had the replacement Ser5 → Pro and most had a further altered sequence extending one, two, three or four residues to the left. The most extensively altered revertant had a sequence with the extra residue Met at the N-terminus: Met-Leu-Thr-Phe-Pro-Pro- instead of the normal sequence N-acetyl-Ser-Asn-Leu-Pro-Ser-. The results are interpreted as meaning that am6 is a frameshift mutant, with the insertion of a base in the Ser5 codon, and that the revertants are all deletions at various positions to the left. Most of the revertants can be explained as single-base deletions, but some appear to have arisen by a more complex type of event. One revertant is a four-base deletion. The longest double-frameshifted sequence, on the basis of the simplest hypothesis as to its origin, defines the first 17 bases of the messenger RNA coding sequence. The altered sequences do not appear to affect the enzyme activity, except that they do, to different extents depending on the sequence, affect its sensitivity to heat.     

High energy phosphate concentrations and AMPK phosphorylation in skeletal muscle from mice with inherited differences in hypoxic exercise tolerance

The effect of chronic hypobaric hypoxia (1/2 atmospheric pressure) on high energy phosphate (HEP) compounds was investigated in slow (soleus; SOL) and fast twitch (extensor digitorum longus; EDL) muscle from 3 strains of mice with large differences in hypoxic exercise tolerance (HET). Phosphocreatine concentration ([PCr]) decreased 16–29% following hypoxia in EDL and SOL in all strains, while [ADP] and [AMP] increased. In the EDL, HET was negatively correlated with the PCr/ATP ratio and positively correlated with the ATP/P_i ratio. The free energy of ATP hydrolysis (ΔG_obs) remained constant despite the substantial changes that occurred in HEP profiles. The alteration of HEP set points and preservation of ΔG_obs are consistent with the notion that (1) maximal rates of steady-state ATP turnover are reduced under hypoxia, and (2) HEP perturbations during rest to work transitions are reduced in skeletal muscle from hypoxia acclimated animals. We therefore expected a lower phosphorylation ratio of AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK-P/AMPK) during stimulation in hypoxic acclimated animals. However, neither the resting nor stimulated AMPK-P/AMPK was influenced by hypoxia, although there were significant differences among strains.