Phosphofructokinase from Ascaris suum. Purification and properties.

A rapid and efficient procedure has been developed to purify phosphofructokinase from the muscle of the parasitic roundworm, Ascaris suum. The procedure can be accomplished in 1 day with a 420-fold purification and a 60% yield. The enzyme was shown to be homogeneous by two-dimensional electrophoresis, Sepharose 6B column chromatography, and high performance liquid chromatography utilizing a size exclusion column. The subunit molecular weight of the enzyme was found to be 95,000 by electrophoresis in the presence of sodium dodecyl sulfate. In solutions of low ionic strength, the native enzyme aggregated to species of higher molecular weight than did the rabbit muscle phosphofructokinase. In the presence of 0.2 M (NH4)2SO4, the minimum native molecular weight was determined to be 398,000 by high performance liquid chromatography and Sepharose 6B column chromatography. Therefore, the enzyme appears to be a tetramer with identical or near-identical subunits. The apparent isoelectric point of the enzyme was shown to be 7.3 to 7.4 by both column and gel isoelectric focusing. Amino acid analysis revealed a lower number of the aromatic residues Phe, Tyr, and Trp than in the rabbit muscle enzyme and this is in agreement with the lower extinction coefficient of E1%280 nm = 6.5. Analysis of the purified enzyme revealed 7.4 +/- 0.6 mol of phosphate/mol of enzyme.