Enzymic capacities of purine de Novo and salvage pathways for nucleotide synthesis in normal and neoplastic tissues.

The enzymic capacities of the de novo and the salvage pathways for purine nucleotide synthesis were compared in rat in normal, differentiating, and regenerating liver, and in three hepatomas of widely different growth rates. The activities of the key de novo and salvage enzymes were also determined in mouse lung and Lewis lung carcinoma, in human kidney and liver, and in renal cell carcinoma and hepatocellular carcinomas. A precise and reproducible assay was worked out for measuring the activities of adenine phosphoribosyltransferase (EC 2.4.2.7) and hypoxanthine-guanine phosphoribosyltransferase (HGPRT; EC 2.4.2.8) in crude liver and hepatoma systems. Kinetic studies on the salvage enzymes were carried out in the crude 100,000 X g supernatant fluid from normal liver and rapidly growing hepatoma 3924A. In both tissue extracts, Michaelis-Menten kinetics was observed for adenine phosphoribosyltransferase and HGPRT. The reciprocal plots for 5-phosphoribosyl-1-pyrophosphate (PRPP) of liver and hepatoma enzymes gave apparent KmS of 2 microM for adenine phosphoribosyltransferase and 4 microM for HGPRT, showing two orders of magnitude higher affinities for PRPP than that of the rate-limiting enzyme of de novo purine synthesis, amidophosphoribosyltransferase (EC 2.4.2.14) (Km = 400 to 900 microM). The apparent Km values for adenine of liver and hepatoma adenine phosphoribosyltransferase were 0.6 to 0.9 microM, respectively. For both liver and hepatoma HGPRT, the reciprocal plots for hypoxanthine and guanine yielded the same Km of 3 microM. The specific activities of purine phosphoribosyltransferases were markedly higher than that of amidophosphoribosyltransferase in rat thymus, spleen, testis, bone marrow, colon, liver, kidney cortex, lung, heart, brain, and skeletal muscle, but were lower in the small intestine. In hepatomas and regenerating and differentiating liver, the activities of the salvage enzymes were 2.1- to 32-fold higher than that of amidophosphoribosyltransferase. The purine phosphoribosyltransferase activities were also higher than that of amidophosphoribosyltransferase in Lewis lung carcinoma (8.2- to 32-fold), human renal cell carcinoma (3.5- to 22-fold), and hepatocellular carcinoma (3.4- to 30-fold). The high activities and the high affinity to PRPP of the purine phosphoribosyltransferases might explain the lack of linkage of the behavior of these enzymic activities with proliferation in normal, regenerating, differentiating, or neoplastic tissues. In contrast, the specific activity of the amidophosphoribosyltransferase, which is lower than that of the salvage enzymes, is linked with transformation as it is increased in all examined tumors.4