Effect of diet on adenylosuccinase activity in various organs of rat and chicken.

Adenylosuccinase activity of rat liver is depressed by prolonged starvation, cortisol administration, high protein diets, and alloxan diabetes. The loss of activity is not due to the accumulation of a dissociable inhibitor or loss of a cofactor. Starvation produces no loss in activity for 1 day; thereafter the activities of the liver and spleen enzyme decay with a half-life of about 0.9 day. Starvation produces no change in the activity of the kidney, brain, and skeletal muscle enzyme. Refeeding restores the activity of the liver enzyme to the fed level, with only a slight overshoot. The recovery of adenylosuccinase activity is equally rapid after refeeding a balanced diet, or corn oil, or glucose, and is not inhibited by injection of glucagon, in contrast to malic enzyme activity. Recovery is inhibited by cycloheximide, indicating the involvement of protein synthesis. Althouth adenylosuccinase is depressed in liver of starving rat it is elevated in liver of starving chicken. Starvation depresses malic enzyme activity and elevates alanine aminotransferase activity in both species. When rats are starved, the rate of de novo synthesis of adenine mononucleotide decreases in spleen and liver but not in kidney, suggesting a regulatory role for adenylosuccinase in purine biosynthesis. The low activity of adenylosuccinase in liver of severely starved rats is inconsistent with the proposal (Moss, K. M., and McGivan, J.D. (1975) Biochem. J. 150, 275-283) that the purine nucleotide cycle plays a major role in ammonia production for urea synthesis, at least under these conditions.