The Mg(2+)-ATPase of rabbit skeletal-muscle transverse tubule is a highly glycosylated multiple-subunit enzyme.

The Mg(2+)-ATPase present in rabbit skeletal-muscle transverse tubules is an integral membrane enzyme which has been solubilized and purified previously in this laboratory [Kirley (1988) J. Biol. Chem. 263, 12682-12689]. The present study indicates that, in addition to the approx. 100 kDa protein (distinct from the sarcoplasmic-reticulum Ca(2+)-ATPase) seen previously to co-purify with the Mg(2+)-ATPase activity, there are also proteins having molecular masses of 160, 70 and 43 kDa. The 70 and 43 kDa glycosylated proteins (50 and 31 kDa after deglycosylation) are difficult to detect by SDS/PAGE before deglycosylation, owing to the broadness of the bands. Additional purification procedures, cross-linking studies and chemical and enzymic deglycosylation studies were undertaken to determine the structure and relationship of these proteins. Both the 97 and 160 kDa proteins were demonstrated to be N-glycosylated at multiple sites, the 97 kDa protein being reduced to a peptide core of 84 kDa and the 160 kDa protein to a peptide core of 131 kDa after deglycosylation. Although the Mg(2+)-ATPase activity is resistant to a number of chemical modification reagents, cross-linking inactivates the enzyme at low concentrations. This inactivation is accompanied by cross-linking of two 97 kDa molecules to one another, suggesting that the 97 kDa protein is involved in ATP hydrolysis. The existence of several proteins along with the inhibition of ATPase activity by cross-linking is consistent with the interpretation of the susceptibility of this enzyme to inactivation by most detergents as being due to the disruption of a protein complex of associated subunits by the inactivating detergents. The 160 kDa glycoprotein can be partially resolved from the Mg(2+)-ATPase activity, and is identified by its N-terminal amino acid sequence as angiotensin-converting enzyme.