Immunochemical characterization of variant medium-chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenase in fibroblasts from patients with medium-chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenase deficiency.

Medium-chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenase (MCAD) deficiency is a common autosomal recessive disorder of mitochondrial fatty acid oxidation characterized by episodes of hypoketotic hypoglycemia usually beginning in the first 2 y of life. We previously showed, in pulse labeling experiments, that the biosynthesis and immediate posttranslational processing of MCAD are normal in fibroblasts from patients with MCAD deficiency. Most patients studied to date are homozygous for a point mutation (A985-G) that results in the substitution of glutamate for lysine ar residue 304 of the mature MCAD subunit. We performed immunoblot analysis of fibroblast MCAD from a total of 34 patients with MCAD deficiency, including 31 homozygous for the A985-G mutation, using a rabbit anti-rat MCAD antibody that cross-reacted specifically with human MCAD, but not with the related enzymes, short-chain and long-chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenases. All patients with the A985-G mutation lacked detectable MCAD. Pulse-chase labeling of MCAD-deficient fibroblasts with 35S-methionine demonstrated that this variant MCAD was unstable compared to controls. Taken together, these data suggest that this mutation affects the stability of MCAD protein within the mitochondrial matrix.