Sialyltransferase of the 13762 rat mammary ascites tumor cells.

The MAT-B1 and MAT-C1 ascites sublines of the 13762 rat mammary adenocarcinoma differ in morphology, agglutinability with concanavalin A, and xenotransplantability. Both cell lines contain a major mucin-type glycoprotein, but the MAT-C1 (xenotransplantable) subline contains a 3-fold-greater content of sialic acid on the glycoprotein than does the MAT-B1 (nonxenotransplantable) subline. The present work indicates that whole cells of both lines incorporate radioactivity from labeled CMP-sialic acid into a component which comigrates with the major glycoprotein by sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, and that label incorporated by MAT-B1 cells is released by alkaline-borohydride treatment. Sialyltransferase can be purified from 250- to 400-fold by chromatography of a Triton X-100 extract of microsomes on CDP-agarose. The purified fraction of both cell lines has a Km for CMP-sialic acid of 0.40 +/- 0.10 mM with asialofetuin as the acceptor, and gives 35 to 40% of the activity with the acceptor asialotransferrin as with asialofetuin. When assayed with a variety of acceptors, the MAT-C1 extract showed higher sialyltransferase activity at a pH below 6.5 than did the MAT-B1 extract. Analysis of the products following incubation with lactose yields only 3'-sialyllactose for both cell lines. The results indicate that the differences in MAT-B1 and MAT-C1 sialyltransferase when assayed with glycoprotein acceptors are not large enough to account for the differences in sialic acid content of the two cell lines.