New procedures to measure synthase and phosphatase activities of bisphosphoglycerate mutase. Interest for development of therapeutic drugs.

In red blood cells, a modulation of the level of the allosteric effector of hemoglobin, 2,3-diphosphoglycerate (2,3-DPG) would have implications in the treatment of ischemia and sickle cell anemia. Its concentration is determined by the relative activities of the synthase and phosphatase reactions of the multifunctional bisphosphoglycerate mutase (BPGM). In this report we develop first a more direct synthase assay which uses glyceraldehyde phosphate to suppress the aldolase and triose phosphate isomerase reactions. Secondly we propose a radioactive phosphatase assay coupled to chromatographic separation and identification of the reaction products by paper electrophoresis. Such identification of these products allow us to show that the multifunctional BPGM expresses its mutase instead of its phosphatase activity in conditions of competition between the 3-phosphoglycerate and the 2-phosphoglycolate activator in the phosphatase reaction. These two more precise procedures could be used to study the effects of substrate and cofactor analogues regarding potential therapeutic approaches and could be used for clinical analyses to detect deficiency of BPGM.