The degradation and turnover of fucosylated glycoproteins in the plasma membrane of a neuroblastoma-cell line.

When monolayer cultures of neuroblastoma N2a cells were prelabelled with [(3)H]fucose to steady state, and then reincubated in complete medium in the presence of unlabelled 40mm-l-fucose, there was a rapid metabolism of fucosylated cellular macromolecules and the specific radioactivity of the acid-insoluble material decreased by 22% within 2h. After this period of time the remaining radioactive glycoproteins appeared to be more stable and the rate of loss of specific radioactivity markedly decreased. Since fucose is known to be associated predominantly with plasma-membrane components, the analysis of fucosylated glycoproteins was characterized in plasma-membrane fractions by polyacrylamide-gel electrophoresis. Two experimental approaches were used to measure glycoprotein degradation and turnover in the cell-surface membranes. In one set of experiments, with a similar incubation procedure to that used with intact cells, three membrane components were rapidly degraded (150000, 130000 and 48000 daltons), but another surface glycoprotein (68000 daltons) appeared to be more slowly metabolized than the mean rate of glycoprotein degradation. The relationship of the degradation of membrane glycoproteins to their turnover was analysed by dual-label experiments that used both [(14)C]fucose and [(3)H]fucose. Glycoproteins of the surface membrane of neuroblastoma cells were found to turn over at heterogeneous rates. The components mentioned above that exhibited significantly rapid rates of degradation, were also shown to turn over more rapidly than the average surface component. In addition to the membrane components detected by the use of only [(3)H]fucose, dual-label experiments illustrated that numerous surface glycoproteins were metabolized more rapidly or slowly than most of the cell-surface constituents.