S-adenosylhomocysteinase: mechanism of reversible and irreversible inactivation by ATP, cAMP, and 2'-deoxyadenosine.

Homogeneous S-adenosylhomocysteinase (AdoHcyase) from rat liver is a tetrameric enzyme that contains four molecules of tightly bound NAD per mole of enzyme. We report here that incubation of the rat liver enzyme with ATP, Mg2+, and KCl leads to conversion of the active enzyme to an inactive form with release of all enzyme-bound NAD which can be recovered quantitatively by gel filtration. At various concentrations of ATP, the release of NAD corresponds closely with the degree of inactivation, suggesting that the four subunits are equivalent. Hydrolysis of ATP is not required for the inactivation process since nonhydrolyzable ATP analogues can replace ATP in the inactivation process. The ATP-dependent inactivation is fully reversible upon incubation of the inactivated enzyme with NAD. The ATP-dependent inactivation of the enzyme appears to be analogues to the cAMP-dependent inactivation of the enzyme from Dictyostelium discoideum described earlier by Hohman et al. (1985) [Hohman, R. J., Guitton, M. C., & Veron, M. (1985) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 82, 4578-4581; Hohman, R. J., Veron, M., & Guitton, M. C. (1985) Curr. Top. Cell. Regul. 26, 233-245] but differs from the irreversible inactivation studied earlier by Abeles et al. (1982) [Abeles, R. H., Fish, S., & Lapinskas, B. (1982) Biochemistry 21, 5557-5562]. These authors have ascribed the time-dependent inactivation that results from incubation of the enzyme with 2'-deoxyadenosine at the C-3' and concluded that AdoHcyase "probably consists of two nonequivalent pairs of subunits".(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)