Subunit interaction of adenylylated glutamine synthetase.

The glutamine synthetase (GS) activity in Escherichia coli is regulated by a bicyclic interconvertible enzyme cascade which involves the cyclic adenylylation (inactivation) and deadenylylation (activation) of GS on the one hand, and the modulation of these processes by the uridylylation and deuridylylation of Shapiro's regulatory protein on the other. The specific activity of GS in a given metabolic state is determined by the fraction of its subunits that are adenylylated, and this fraction is determined by the concentration of over 40 metabolites. Through allosteric and substrate interactions with one or more of the cascade enzymes, these metabolites alter the rates of the covalent modification and demodification reactions. By means of immunoprecipitation studies with anti-AMP specific antibodies, it has been established that the partially adenylylated glutamine synthetase, which is present in a given steady state, is a mixture of hybrid molecules containing different numbers and possibly distributions of adenylylated subunits. Partial separation of these hybrid mixtures has been achieved by affinity chromatography on Affi-Blue Sepharose columns. From immunochemical studies it is evident that anti-AMP antibodies can react with adenylylated subunits of all molecular species of GS, but that the capacities of these primary antigen-antibody reactions to yield precipitable aggregates is very dependent of the number of adenylylated subunits per molecule, and much less so upon the total concentration of adenylylated subunits present. the studies suggest that precipitability is a function either of the distribution of adenylylated subunits within hybrid species, or of the kinetics of intra- vs intermolecular bivalent interactions.