Phosphorylase muscle

Muscle phosphorylase is distinct from that of Hver. It is a dimer, each monomer containing 1 mol of pyridoxal phosphate (vitamin Bg). It is present in two forms phos-phoiylase a, which is phosphorylated and active in either the presence or absence of 5 -AMP (its allosteric modifier) and phosphorylase h, which is dephosphorylated and active only in the presence of 5 -AMP. This occurs during exercise when the level of 5 -AMP rises, providing, by this mechanism, fuel for the muscle. Phosphorylase a is the normal physiologically active form of the enzyme. 

Glycogenolysis increases in muscle several hundred-fold immediately after the onset of contraction. This involves the rapid activation of phosphorylase by activation of phosphorylase kinase by Ca +, the same signal as that which initiates contraction in response to nerve stimulation. Muscle phosphorylase kinase has four... 

TypeV Myophosphorylase deficiency, McArdle s syndrome Absence of muscle phosphorylase Diminished exercise tolerance muscles have abnormally high glycogen content (2.5-4.1%). Little or no lactate in blood after exercise. 

Phosphorylase was studied in depth. The enzyme from muscle was different from that catalyzing the same reaction in liver. Muscle phosphorylase but not that from liver, was activated by AMP, an early example of enzyme regulation by a ligand which was not a substrate. [Allosteric regulation was not postulated until the work of Jacob and... 

Reversible phosphorylation is the main control mechanism of liver phosphorylase allosteric effects being much less pronounced. This is in contrast with muscle phosphorylase, which is also controlled by phosphorylation, stimulated by an adrenaline-... 

Fig. 8. The activity of muscle phosphorylase b (as a logarithm percentage of the activity of the fully AMP-activated enzyme in water) as a funaion of concentration (% v/v) of added organic cosolvent in the absence of AMP. It can be seen that long

In the 1940s Carl and Gertrude Cori isolated and purified an active form (phosphorylase a) and an inactive form (phosphorylase b) of an enzyme from muscle. Phosphorylase b is activated by AMP (see page 64). In 1955, Fischer Krebs found an enzyme that catalysed the conversion of phosphorylase b to phosphorylase a, together with hydrolysis of ATP to ADP. Thus it appeared to bring about phosphorylation of the enzyme. The enzyme was termed phosphorylase b kinase, was partially purified and the interconversion was established as... 

High resolution X-ray structures of the a- and b- form of rabbit muscle phosphorylase permit a view into some of the structural differences of the various allosteric forms of the enzyme. Furthermore, the data give an impression of the mechanism of binding of effectors and the influence that phosphorylation has on substrate binding and enzyme activity (Barford et al., 1991). The following discussion will be restricted to the observed consequences of phosphorylation. 

Krebs, E.G., Graves,D.J. and Fischer, E.H. Factors affecting the activity of muscle phosphorylase kinase (1959) J. Biol. Chem. 2867-2873... 

Fig. 7.18. Regulation of glycogen metabolism in muscle. Phosphorylase kinase stands at the center of regulation of glycogen metabolism. Phosphorylase kinase may exist in an active, phosphorylated form and an inactive, unphosphorylated form. Phosphorylation of phosphorylase kinase is triggered by hormonal signals (e.g. adrenahne) and takes place via an activation of protein kinase A in the cAMP pathway. In the absence of hormonal stimulation, phosphorylase kinase can also be activated by an increase in cytosolic Ca. The active phosphorylase kinase stimulates glycogen degradation and inhibits glycogen synthesis, in that, on the one side, it activates glycogen phosphorylase by phosphorylation, and on the other side, it inactivates glycogen synthase by phosphorylation.

Fig. 7.19. Subunit structure and regulation of phosphorylase kinase of muscle. Phosphorylase kinase is - according to the excitation state of the muscle - regulated by two pathways. On nervous stimulation of the muscle, voltage-controlled Ca channels are opened, the cytosolic Ca concentration increases and Ca binds to calmoduhn, activating phosphorylase kinase. In resting muscle, activation of phosphorylase kinase is triggered by a hormonal signal. A hormonal signal initiates phosphorylation of the a and P subunits of phosphorylase kinase. In the phosphorylated form, Ca binding affinity of the calmodulin subunit (8) is strongly increased and activation is also possible at low Ca concentrations.

Table 4.6.15 Liver and muscle phosphorylase enzyme activities... 

Type V (McArdle s) Muscle phosphorylase Skeletal muscle Exercise-induced cramps and pain myoglobin in urine... 

Fig. 33. Experimentally observed molecular-weight dependence of (S2)z for amylose chains grafted onto glycogen (filled circles) and partially debranched amylopectin (open circles). Grafting was achieved by potato phosphorylase (15 rays for glycogen and 12000 per amylopectin molecule), and by muscle phosphorylase (400 rays per glycogen molecule)142,143)...

Formation of glycogen chains by glycogen muscle phosphorylase and starch amylose by potato phosphorylase. 

Factors which tend to decrease bioavailability of pyridoxine include (1) Administration of isoniazid (2) loss in cooking (estimated at 30-45%)—vitamin is water-soluble, (3) diuresis and gastrointestinal diseases (4) irradiation. Availability can be increased by stimulating intestinal bacterial production (very small amount), and storage in liver. The target tissues of Be are nervous tissue, liver, lymph nodes, and muscle tissue. Storage is by muscle phosphorylase (skeletal muscle—small amount). It is estimated that 57% of the vitamin ingested per day is excreted. The vitamin exerts only limited toxicity for humans. 

Louise Johnson and her coworkers have determined the crystal structures of T and the R forms of muscle phosphorylase b and the R form of phosphorylase a. In parallel with this work, Robert Fletterick and coworkers determined the structure of the T form of muscle phosphorylase a. The crystal structures provide an incisive look at the structural changes that accompany the transitions from the T to the R conformation and from the nonphosphorylated form of the enzyme to the phosphorylated form. 

When dextransucrase was first described in 1941,4 Cori and Cori64 were studying the action of muscle phosphorylase and Hanes65 was studying potato phos-phorylase. These investigators observed that phosphorylase could elongate... 

The phosphorylase-stimulation assay247 250 is based on the stimulation by branching enzyme of the unprimed reaction in absence of primer activity seen with rabbit muscle phosphorylase a activity. Branching enzyme present in the reaction mixture increases the number of non-reducing ends available to phosphorylase for elongation. 

Earlier studies on the properties of phosphorylases isolated from various sources have indicated that their subunits are similar in size with about 100,000 daltons.15-17 The reaction proceeds in a rapid equilibrium random Bi-Bi mechanism as has been shown by kinetic studies with rabbit skeletal muscle phosphorylases a18-20 and b,21,22 rabbit liver enzyme,23 potato tuber enzyme,24 and the enzyme from E. coli.25) In contrast, the substrate specificities for various glucans differ considerably depending on the enzyme sources. The rabbit muscle enzyme has high affinity for branched glucans such as glycogen and amylopectin but low affinity for amylose and maltodextrin.26,27 The potato tuber enzyme can act on amylose, amylopectin, and maltodextrin but only poorly on glycogen,28,29 while the E. coli enzyme shows high affinity for maltodextrin.10 ... 

Figure 6.1 also includes the sequence comparison with the rabbit muscle phosphorylase.I6,30) The sequence homologies of the animal enzyme with the potato type-L and type-H phosphorylase isozymes are 38% and 47%, respectively. Further sequence comparison of the plant and animal enzymes with the enzyme from E. co/i82 reveals an overall homology of at least 40%. These high similarities indicate that the phosphorylase family is one of the well-conserved protein groups. 

In conclusion, it should be pointed out that in marked contrast to the very extensive studies on rabbit muscle phosphorylase, little attention has been paid to enzymes from other sources. However, primary structures of plant phosphorylases have now been determined and bacterial expression systems for the plant enzymes have also been made available as reviewed in this article. We hope that future studies on the structure and function of plant phosphorylases without allosteric regulation and comparison with those of the highly regulated animal enzyme will provide valuable information on this interesting group of enzymes, phosphorylases. 

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