Bile salt-dependent and bile salt-independent cholesteryl ester hydrolase activities in rat liver cytosol.

These studies report on the relationship between the bile salt-dependent and -independent cholesteryl ester hydrolase (CEH) activities found in rat liver cytosol. The two activities show very similar Michaelis-Menten substrate kinetics and pH dependence. After gel filtration of cytosol, the bile salt-independent activity elutes much earlier than the bile salt-dependent activity, suggesting that the two activities are associated with entities of different molecular size. However, when gel filtration is carried out in the presence of bile salt, the bile salt-dependent activity elutes as a large aggregate, similar to the bile salt-independent activity's behavior in the absence of bile salt. Both activities coelute after cytosol is passed through an ion exchange column. After each chromatographic procedure the recovery of the bile salt-dependent activity was substantially higher than the recovery of the bile salt-independent activity. When cytosol is incubated with anti-rat pancreatic CEH in the absence of cholate, the bile salt-dependent activity is inhibited more than 90% whereas bile salt-independent activity remains unaffected even at high antibody concentrations. When cytosol is incubated with anti-rat pancreatic CEH in the presence of cholate both CEH activities remain unaffected. The prevention of immunoinhibition by cholate seems to be specific for this detergent since CHAPS, a cholate analog, does not prevent immunoinhibition of the bile salt-dependent activity by anti-CEH. The experimental results are consistent with a model for CEH activity in liver cytosol in which there is only one enzyme that can exist in a monomeric, inactive form (that can be activated by addition of cholate to the assay and represents the bile salt-dependent activity) and in an active complex comprising several enzyme monomers as well as cholate micelles (that accounts for the bile salt-independent activity).