| Abstract: | The uptake of adenosine by an adenosine kinase deficient variant of C1300 murine neuroblastoma cells has been studied in the absence and in the presence of erythro-9-(2-hydroxy-3-nonyl)adenine, a potent adenine deaminase inhibitor. Although 100 micro M inhibitor completely blocks the metabolism of adenosine under the conditions studied, the uptake of adenosine is concentrative, i.e., the intracellular adenosine concentration exceeds the extracellular concentration. This concentrative effect decreases as the concentration of adenosine increases and is hypothesized to be due to the binding of adenosine to an intracellular component. Despite this concentrative effect, we believe that the kinetics of uptake, as determined in experiments with short (10-20 s) uptake periods, reflect the kinetics of adenosine transport by a facilitated diffusion process. This nucleoside transport system appears to be nonspecific in that the transport of adenosine is competitively antagonized by thymidine. It does not appear to be necessary to inhibit adenosine deaminase in order to study transport in these cells as the Km for transport is not affected by the presence of erythro-9-(2-hydroxy-3-nonyl)adenine. However, erythro-9-(2-hydroxy-3-nonyl)adenine does depress the V for transport. This effect of the inhibitor is probably not due to the inhibition of adenosine deaminase as the transport of thymidine is similarly affected. |
