The activities in different neural cell types of certain enzymes associated with the metabolic compartmentation glutamate.

The cellular distribution of certain enzymes associated with the metabolic compartmentation of glutamate was estimated in ultrastructurally preserved and metabolically competent perikarya fractions that were enriched in astrocytes, granule cells and Purkinje cells and derived from 8-day-old rat cerebellum, and in monolayer cultures (14 days in vitro) composed principally of interneurones or astrocytes. The neuronal activities of glutamine synthetase and glutamate dehydrogenase were respectively about 4- to 8-fold and 2- to 5-fold lower than in astrocytes, depending upon the class of neurone and the type of preparation used for comparison. By contrast glutaminase activity was about 3- to 12-fold higher in neuronal than in astroglial preparations. Estimations of the specific activity of succinate dehydrogenase differed less between cell types, indicating that the differences in glutamate dehydrogenase and glutaminase were not simply related to variations in the concentration of mitochondria relative to the other cellular constituents. The findings presented provide direct evidence in support of our model assigning the 'small' glutamate compartment, where most of the labelled glutamine is synthesized, to glial cells, and the 'large' compartment to neurones, and also underline the metabolic interaction between these two cell types in the brain.