Isolation and characterization of plasma membranes from strains of Neurospora crassa with wild type morphology.

A variety of commercially available cell wall hydrolytic enzyme preparations were screened alone and in various combinations for their ability to degrade the cell wall of Neurospora crassa wild type strain 1A. A combination was found which causes complete conversion of the normally filamentous germinated conidia to spherical structures in about 1.5 h. Examination of these spheroplasts by scanning electron microscopy indicated that, although they are spherical, they retain a smooth coat that can only be removed upon prolonged incubation in the enzyme mixture (about 10 h). The 10-h incubation in the enzyme mixture appears to have no obvious detrimental effects on the integrity of the plasma membrane since the activity and regulatory properties of the glucose active transport system in 10-h spheroplasts are essentially unimpaired. Importantly, plasma membranes can be isolated from the 10-h spheroplasts by an adaptation of the concanavalin A method developed previously in this laboratory for cells of the cell wall-less sl strain, which is not the case for the 1.5-h spheroplasts. The yield of plasma membrane vesicles isolated by this procedure is 18-36% as indicated by surface labeling with diazotized [125I]iodosulfanilic acid, and the preparation is less than 1% contaminated with mitochondrial protein. The chemical composition of the wild type plasma membranes is similar to that previously reported for membranes of the sl strain of Neurospora. The isolated wild type plasma membrane vesicles also exhibit all of the functional properties that have previously been demonstrated for the sl plasma membrane vesicles. The wild type vesicles catalyze MgATP-dependent electrogenic proton translocation as indicated by the concentrative uptake of [14C]SCN- and [14C]imidazole under the appropriate conditions, which indicates that they contain the plasma membrane H+-ATPase previously shown to exist in the sl plasma membranes and that they possess permeability barrier function as well. The vesicles also contain a Ca2+/H+ antiporter as evidenced by their ability to catalyze protonophore-inhibited MgATP-dependent 45Ca2+ accumulation. Sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoretic analyses of the isolated vesicles indicate that the protein composition of the wild type vesicles is roughly similar to that of the sl plasma membranes with the H+-ATPase present as a major band of Mr approximately 105,000. The wild type plasma membrane ATPase forms a phosphorylated intermediate similar to that of the sl ATPase, and the specific activity of the H+-ATPase in both wild type and sl membranes is approximately 3 mumol of Pi released/mg of protein/min.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)