| Abstract: | Some peculiarities of adenosine and adenine nucleotide metabolism in rat thymocytes were investigated. It was shown that the uptake of labelled adenosine or adenine by thymocytes is markedly inhibited by papaverine due to the decrease of the adenylate kinase activity, on the one hand, and to the acceleration of ATP catabolism and inosine and hypoxanthine release into the environment, on the other. ATP catabolism occurs in a special compartment which in 14C] adenosine and 14C] adenine prelabelled thymocytes has a higher specific radioactivity as compared with the whole cell. In 14C] adenine-prelabelled thymocytes and extracellular medium, papaverine does not influence the content but increases the specific radioactivity of adenosine. |
