Enzymic dephosphorylation of pepsin and pepsinogen

It has been shown by the work presented in this paper that it is possible to dephosphorylate enzymically pepsin and pepsinogen with a variety of phosphatases. With the aid of a phosphodiesterase and the prostate phosphatase it has been established that the phosphorus in the two proteins is present as a diester and connects two sites of the peptide chain in a cyclic configuration. Removal of the phosphorus does not affect the proteolytic activity against hemoglobin or the synthetic substrate acetyl-L-phenylalanyl diiodotryosine, nor the pepsinogen pepsin transformation. However, an increase of the autodigestion of pepsin is observed.     

N-terminal sequence of swine pepsinogen and pepsin. The site of pepsinogen activation

The sequence of 119 amino acids of swine pepsinogen comprising the fragment released during the zymogen activation as well as the N-terminal part of pepsin is established. The activation of swine pepsinogen is shown to be accompanied by specific cleavage of Leu-Ile bond in the sequence:

$\text{Ala}\text{41}\text{Ala Ala Leu Ile}\text{Gly}\text{46}$

where Ile-45 represents the N-terminal residue of pepsin. This sequence is attacked in the course of pepsinogen activation by external enzymes — neutral proteinases and elastase.     

Modification of swine pepsin and pepsinogen by p-nitrophenyldiazonium chloride

It was found that at pH 5.2 and 40-fold excess of p-nitrophenyldiazonium chloride the inhibitor incorporation into the porcine pepsin molecule involves 1.9 residues, one residue being bound to tyrosine 189. Besides, tyrosines 44, 113, 154 and 174 enter the reaction. Modified pepsin retains 25% of the native enzyme activity. In the pepsinogen molecule the degree of tyrosine 189 modification diminishes 5 times; of 1.5 inhibitor molecules incorporated into the protein 0.78 residues are bound to tyrosine 113. The potential proteolytic activity of modified pepsinogen towards haemoglobin cleavage makes up to 60% of the original one. It is concluded that the activation peptide in the pepsinogen molecule masks the substrate binding site bearing tyrosine 189, thus preventing its modification with p-nitrophenyldiazonium chloride. The activation peptide in the pepsinogen molecule is presumably located in the vicinity of the wide loop bend carrying tyrosine residue 113, which may be the reason for the decreased pKa value of this residue and of its increased reactivity in the azocoupling reaction.     

Molecular characteristics of pepsinogen and pepsin from duck glandular stomach

1. Two procedures were developed for the preparation of duck pepsinogen, an enzyme from the family of aspartic proteases (EC 3.4.23.1) and its zymogen. 2. The amino acid composition, sugar content and the partial N- and C-terminal sequences of both the enzyme and the zymogen were determined. These sequences are highly homologous with the terminal sequences of chicken pepsin(ogen). 3. Duck pepsinogen and pepsin are unlike other pepsin(ogen)s in being relatively stable in alkaline media: pepsinogen is inactivated at pH 12.1, pepsin at pH 9.6. 4. Duck pepsin is inhibited by diazoacetyl-D,L-norleucine methyl ester (DAN), 1,2-epoxy-3(p-nitrophe-noxy)propane (EPNP), pepstatin and a synthetic pepsin inhibitor Val-D-Leu-Pro-Phe-Phe-Val-D- Leu. The pH-optimum of duck pepsin determined in the presence of synthetic substrate is pH 4. 5. Duck pepsin has a marked milk-clotting activity whereas its proteolytic activity is lower than that of chicken pepsin. 6. The activation of duck pepsinogen is paralleled by two conformational changes. The activation half-life determined in the presence of a synthetic substrate at pH 2 and 14 degrees C is 20 sec.     

Depolarization of the intrinsic and extrinsic fluorescence of pepsinogen and pepsin

1. The effects on the intrinsic tryptophan emission anisotropy of pepsin and pepsinogen solutions produced by (a) changes in temperature, (b) increases in viscosity with added glycerol at constant temperature and (c) decreases in lifetime through collisional quenching by potassium iodide were measured at several excitation wavelengths. The rotational-relaxation times calculated from results provided by method (b) approximate to the theoretical values for the two proteins, on taking hydration and shape factors into account, on the basis of random orientation of the tryptophan groups within the macromolecules. Differences between the results provided by methods (b) and (c) are attributable to inter-tryptophan resonance-energy-transfer depolarization, and the anomalous values recorded in method (a) can be attributed to the temperature-dependence of the limiting anisotropies. 2. Two different monomeric conjugates of pepsin, each containing one extrinsic fluorescent group per macromolecule, gave widely different relaxation times. This difference may arise from a specific orientation of the emission dipole in the enzyme. In active-site-labelled pepsin (1-dimethylaminonaphthalene-5-sulphonylphenylalanine–pepsin) this orientation would be approximately parallel to the symmetry axis of the equivalent ellipsoid, whereas in the other conjugate (1-dimethylaminonaphthalene-5-sulphonyl-pepsin) the orientation may be roughly normal to this direction, or some independent rotation of parts of the protein molecule is possible.     

Conversion of pepsinogen into pepsin is not a one-step process.

By incubation of pepsinogen with pepstatin at pH2.5, the first 'active' protein generated on activation is trapped in an inactive complex. The first activation peptide liberated has been identified as residues 1-16 from the pepsinogen sequence. This suggests a sequential mechanism rather than a one-step formation of pepsin.     

Conversion of pepsinogen to pepsin. Further evidence for intramolecular and pepsin-catalyzed activation.

Exposure of pepsinogen to acid for less than 2 min yields a product with proteolytic activity. This activity is due to intramolecular and intermolecular formation of pepsin from pepsinogen. We find no evidence for intermolecular proteolytic activity in the zymogen. These conclusions are based upon two sets of experiments. First, chemical cleavage of pepsinogen during short activation is demonstrated by quantitative analysis of the NH2-terminal 2 residues of the pepsin and pepsinogen in an activation mixture. In addition, quantitative NH2-terminal analyses after activation under different conditions confirm our previous inference that the product of unimolecular pepsinogen activation is homogeneous whereas bimolecular activation produces a pepsin product with a variety of NH2 termini. Second, spectral changes which occur upon acidification of a pepsinogen solution and are reversed by neutralization are shown to be consistent with the chemical cleavage of pepsinogen during acidification. The first order rate constant for pepsinogen activation, calculated from these spectral experiments, agrees well with the value we had determined previously.     

Purificaton and characterization of a pepsinogen and its pepsin from proventriculus of the Japanese quail

A crude extract of the proventriculus of the Japanese quail gave at least five bands of peptic activity at pH 2.2 on polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. The main component, constituting about 40% of the total acid protease activity, was purified to homogeneity by hydroxyapatite and DEAE-Sepharose column chromatographies. At below pH 4.0, the pepsinogen was converted to a pepsin, which had the same electrophoretic mobility as one of the five bands of peptic activity present in the crude extract. The molecular weights of the pepsinogen and the pepsin were 40 000 and 36 000, respectively. Quail pepsin was stable in alkali up to pH 8.5. The optimal pH of the pepsin on hemoglobin was pH 3.0. The pepsin had about half the milk-clotting activity of purified porcine pepsin, but the pepsinogen itself had no activity. The hydrolytic activity of quail pepsin on N-acetyl-L-phenylalanyl-3,5-diiodo-L-tyrosine was about 1% of that of porcine pepsin. Among the various protease inhibitors tested, only pepstatin inhibited the proteolytic activity of the pepsin. The amino acid composition of quail pepsinogen was found to be rather similar to that of chick pepsinogen C, and these two pepsinogens possessed common antigenicity.     

On the apparent inhibition of intramolecular activation of pepsinogen by pepsin substrates.

Marciniszyn et al. (Marciniszyn, J., Huang, J. S. Hartsuch, J. A., Tang, J. (1976) J. Biol. Chem. 251, 7095-7102) have recently suggested an intermediate in the intramolecular activation of pepsinogen. As evidence, they showed apparent competitive inhibition of activation by globin, indication a pepsinogen-globin complex. Previous work had shown pepsinogen activation to occur very rapidly in the presence of high concentrations of hemoglobin, a very similar pepsin substrate (McPhie, P. (1974) Biochem. Biophys. Res. Commun. 56, 789-792). This contradiction has been resolved by a re-evaluation of the techniques used in the two investigations. The experimental conditions of Marciniszyn et al. Were inadequately defined to ensure denaturation of pepsin, a prerequisite of their method. A small decrease in pH, caused by the presence of extraneous protein, prevents this denaturation and leads to consistent underestimates of the rate of zymogen activation.