Studies on adenosine triphosphate transphosphorylases. Human isoenzymes of adenylate kinase: isolation and physicochemical comparison of the crystalline human ATP-AMP transphosphorylases from muscle and liver.

Procedures are described for the isolation, in crystalline form, of the adenylate kinases from autopsy samples of human muscle and from human liver. Weight average molecular weights were determined by sedimentation equilibrium to be 22,000 (+/- 700) and 25,450 (+/- 160) for the human muscle and liver isoenzymes, respectively. By sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, their molecular weights were estimated to be 21,700 and 26,500 for the muscle and liver enzymes, respectively. Both isoenzymes are accordingly monomeric proteins in their native state. Amino acid analyses are reported here for the normal human liver, calf liver, and rabbit liver adenylate kinases and compared with the normal human muscle, calf muscle, and rabbit muscle myokinases. The liver types as a group and the muscle types as a group show a great deal of homology, but some distinct differences are evident between the liver and muscle enzyme groups, especially in the number of residues of His, Pro, half-cystine, and the presence of tryptophan in the liver enzymes. The normal human liver adenylate kinase, as isolated in this report, has proved to be similar in its properties, if not identical, to the adenylate kinase isolated directly from human liver mitochondria (Hamada, M., Sumida, M., Okuda, H., Watanabe, T., Nojima, M., and Kuby, S. A. (1982) J. Biol. Chem. 257, 13120-13128). Therefore, the liver-type adenylate kinase may be considered a mitochondrial type.