Deficiency metabolic cooperation

STUDIES ON METABOLIC COOPERATION USING DIFFERENT TYPES OF NORMAL AND HYPOXANTHINE-GUANINE PHOSPHORIBOSYLTRANSFERASE (HG-PRT) DEFICIENT CELLS... 

The experiments reported in this paper were designed to test one of several possible mechanisms that may underly the phenomenon of metabolic cooperation between normal and HG-PRT deficient cells, namely transfer of some intermediate of the purine metabolism from cell to cell. 

Since Subak-Sharpe et al. (1,2) described the results of auto radiographic studies on mixed cultures of HG-PRT positive and negative cell lines, many workers have studied metabolic cooperation in a similar system, i.e. in mixtures of cultured normal and enzyme deficient fibroblasts. Drawback of such a system is the difficulty to separate normal and enzyme deficient cells afterwards. 

Our aim was to analyse the process of metabolic cooperation separately in the HG-PRT positive and negative cells before and after interaction of the cells. Therefore, the feasibility of using different types of normal and enzyme deficient cells in experiments on metabolic cooperation was investigated. 

Studies on the purine metabolism in intact normal and HG-PRT deficient human red cells (3) showed that the erythrocytes, which were used in the experiments on metabolic cooperation, contained the radioactive label almost exclusively in the form of IMP Slide 5 (Fig 5) The donor erythrocytes in the transfer experiments were preincubated during 40 min After that treatment, besides trace amounts of hypoxanthine, only IMP was recovered from the red cell content In these transfer experiments the preincubated normal erythrocytes were small packets containing %-IMP ... 

Our interest in the role of trace elements in bone metabolism developed in a rather bizarre fashion. Ve became interested in the orthopedic problems of a prominent professional basketball player. Bill Walton. Several years ago he was plagued by frequent broken bones, pains in his joints and an inability to heal bone fractures. We hypothesized that he might be deficient in trace elements as a result of his very limited vegetarian diet. In cooperation with his physician, we were able to analyze Walton s serum. We found no detectable manganese (Mn). His serum concentrations of copper (Cu) and zinc (Zn) were below normal values. Dietary supplementation with trace elements and calcium (Ca) was begun. Over a period of several months his bones healed and he returned to professional basketball (1,2). In cooperation with several other orthopedic physicians, we analyzed serum from other patients with slow bone healing. Several of these patients also had abnormally low Zn, Cu and Mn levels. 

Strand DW, Degralf DJ, Jiang M, Sameni M, Franco OE, Love HD, Hayward WJ, Lin-Tsai O, Wang AY, Cates JM, Sloane BF, Matusik RJ, Hayward SW. Deficiency in metabolic regulators PPARy and PTEN cooperates to drive keratinizing squamous metaplasia in novel models of human tissue regeneration. Am J Pathol. 2013 182 449-59. 

---