Guanidoacetate methyltransferase from rat liver: Purification,properties, and evidence for the involvement of sulfhydryl groups for activity

Guanidoacetate methyltransferase (EC 2.1.1.2) has been purified about 800-fold from rat liver. The purified preparation shows a single protein band on polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis in the presence and absence of sodium dodecyl sulfate. The molecular weight of the enzyme is estimated to be 25,000 and 26,000 by Sephadex gel molecular-exclusion chromatography and by electrophoresis in polyacrylamide gradient gel, respectively. The sodium dodecyl sulfate-denatured enzyme also has a molecular weight of 26,000; thus, the enzyme is a monomeric protein. Guanidoacetate methyltransferase as isolated is catalytically inactive, but is readily reactivated by incubation with a thiol. The reactivated enzyme, which contains 3 mol of sulfhydryl groups/mol of enzyme, is again inactivated by oxidized glutathione. This inactivation is accompanied by the disappearance of two sulfhydryl residues. The relationship between the loss of enzyme activity and the number of residues disappeared indicates that the integrity of these sulfhydryl residues is critical for activity. The oxidized enzyme fails to bind the substrate S-adenosylmethionine as evidenced by the equilibrium dialysis study. Alkylation of the nonoxidizable sulfhydryl by N-ethylmaleimide shows that this residue is also essential for activity. UV absorption, fluorescence, and CD spectra show no difference between the reduced and oxidized enzymes, but the former is more susceptible to proteolytic attack by trypsin. The enzyme has an isoelectric pH of 5.3, and is most active at pH 9.0. From the CD spectrum, an α helix content of 15% is calculated. The K_m values for guanidoacetate and S-adenosylmethionine are 97.5 and 6.73 μm, respectively, at pH 8.0 and 37 °C.     

Suppressive effect of human natural killer cells on pokeweed mitogen-induced B cell differentiation

The suppressive effect of human natural killer (NK) cells on B cell differentiation induced by pokeweed mitogen (PWM) was investigated. By using Percoll discontinuous density gradient centrifugation, peripheral blood nonphagocytic and nonadherent mononuclear cells were divided into low and high density fractions for which NK cells (Large granular lymphocytes, LGL) and T cells were enriched, respectively. These fractionated mononuclear cells were co-cultured with purified autologous B cells in the presence of PWM, and were examined for their helper and suppressor activities on differentiation of B cells to immunoglobulin-(IgM and IgG) producing cells by a highly sensitive reversed hemolytic plaque assay. The T cell-enriched high density fractions provided help for B cell differentiation to levels higher than that of unfractionated mononuclear cells. On the other hand, the NK-enriched low density fractions did not show helper activity, and when added to the culture of B cells plus helper T cells, they markedly suppressed B cell differentiation. This suppressive activity, as well as the NK cytotoxicity of the NK-enriched fractions, was abrogated by treatment of the cells with monoclonal antibody against human NK cells (HNK-1), but not against T cells (OKT3) in the presence of complement. NK cells also suppressed PWM-driven B cell differentiation in the presence of T4+ (helper/inducer T) but not T8+ (cytotoxic/suppressor T) cells; however, they showed no inhibition of soluble factor-induced B cell differentiation assayed in the absence of helper T cells. It is thus concluded that human peripheral blood NK cells exhibit an ability to suppress PWM-driven B cell differentiation, possibly by acting through the effect on helper T cells but not directly on B cells.     

Solution properties of synthetic polypeptides. V. Helix–coil transition in poly(β-benzyl L-aspartate)

Simple approximate expressions have been derived from the theory of Zimm and Bragg for use in the analysis of experimental data on the helix-coil transition in polypeptide. On the basis of the resulting expressions practical procedures are proposed to determine two basic parameters characterizing a thermally induced transition, i.e., helix initiation parameter σ and enthalpy change for helix formation, ΔH. They have been applied to the data for poly(β-benzyl L -aspartate) (PBLA) with the result: σ = 1.6 × 10^?4 and ΔH = ?450 cal/mole for PBLA in m-cresol; σ = 0.6 × 10^?4 and ΔH = 260 cal/mole for PBLA in chloroform containing 5.7 vol-% of dichloroacetic acid. This result gives evidence that σ may change not only from one polypeptide to another but also for a given polypeptide in different solvents. The change in limiting viscosity number [η] accompanying the transition was measured in the same solvents. The curve of [η] versus helical content had a relatively monotonic shape for the chloroformdichloroacetic acid solutions as compared with that for the m-cresol solutions, indicating that [η] depended largely on σ. Provided that [η] is a direct measure of the mean-square radius of gyration, 〈S²〉, the results are consistent with the theoretical predictions of Nagai and of Miller and Flory for 〈S²〉.     

Oxidized and reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate levels of plants hardened and unhardened against chilling injury

Pea plants (Pisum sativum L. var. Alaska) subjected to low temperature (5°) in the light acquired resistance against chilling injury.

Unhardened plants maintained high NADP and low NADPH levels during illumination at 25° but hardened plants had low NADP and high NADPH levels in the light. When the unhardened plants were transferred to the dark room at 25°, their NADPH levels decreased immediately. On the other hand, hardened plants maintained a high NADPH level for a few hours even in the dark.