Phosphorylation/dephosphorylation

Regulatory Control of Fatty Acid Metabolism—An Interplay of Allosteric Modifiers and Phosphorylation-Dephosphorylation Cycles... 

Although the fundamental chemomechanical transduction processes seem to be the same in all types of vertebrate muscle, contraction in smooth muscle is characterized by much greater involvement of enzymatically catalyzed control reactions. In smooth muscle the control reactions themselves involve the use of phosphorylation-dephosphorylation cycles. Moreover, they are futile in the sense they cause the expenditure of bond energy without a tangible work resultant, i.e., compounds synthesized or external work done. 

For the purpose of discussion, crossbridge regulation can be split into three overlapping sets of reactions (a) the Ca-calmodulin cascade (MLCK activation), (b) the phosphorylation-dephosphorylation cycle (the Four State Model), and (c) actin-myosin cycle (chemomechanical transduction). 

Phosphorylation-dephosphorylation. The site on myosin which is phosphory-lated is not the same as the site by which it attaches to actin. Therefore, there are two geometrically separate reactions in regulation and from the Law of Reversibility there must be at least some myosin molecules in at least four different states ... 

Figure 9-7. Covalent modification of a regulated enzyme by phosphorylation-dephosphorylation of a seryl residue.

Protein phosphorylation-dephosphorylation is a highly versatile and selective process. Not all proteins are subject to phosphorylation, and of the many hydroxyl groups on a protein s surface, only one or a small subset are targeted. While the most common enzyme function affected is the protein s catalytic efficiency, phosphorylation can also alter the affinity for substrates, location within the cell, or responsiveness to regulation by allosteric ligands. Phosphorylation can increase an enzyme s catalytic efficiency, converting it to its active form in one protein, while phosphorylation of another converts it into an intrinsically inefficient, or inactive, form (Table 9—1). 

Many proteins can be phosphorylated at multiple sites or are subject to regulation both by phosphorylation-dephosphorylation and by the binding of allosteric ligands. Phosphorylation-dephosphorylation at any one site can be catalyzed by multiple protein kinases or protein phosphatases. Many protein kinases and most protein phosphatases act on more than one protein and are themselves interconverted between active and inactive forms by the binding of second messengers or by covalent modification by phosphorylation-dephosphorylation. 

Table 9-1. Examples of mammalian enzymes whose catalytic activity is altered by covalent phosphorylation-dephosphorylation.

Figure 21-6. Regulation of acetyl-CoA carboxylase by phosphorylation/dephosphorylation.The enzyme is inactivated by phosphorylation by AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK), which in turn is phosphorylated and activated by AMP-activated protein kinase kinase (AMPKK). Glucagon (and epinephrine), after increasing cAMP, activate this latter enzyme via cAMP-dependent protein kinase. The kinase kinase enzyme is also believed to be activated by acyl-CoA. Insulin activates acetyl-CoA carboxylase, probably through an "activator" protein and an insulin-stimulated protein kinase.

Insulin binding to the extracellular side of cell membranes initiates the insulin cascade , a series of phosphorylation/dephosphorylation steps. A postulated mechanism for vanadium is substitution of vanadate for phosphate in the transition state structure of protein tyrosine phosphatases (PTP).267,268 In normal physiological conditions, the attainable oxidation states of vanadium are V111, Viv and Vv. Relevant species in solution are vanadate, (a mixture of HV042-/ H2VOO and vanadyl V02+. Vanadyl is not a strong inhibitor of PTPs, suggesting other potential mechanisms for insulin mimesis for this cation. 

There s also a fructose 2,6-bisphosphatase that hydrolyzes fructose 2,6-bisphosphate see if you can figure out what happens to the phosphatase activity in liver and muscle when the enzyme is phosphorylated. As a check to your answer, you might recall the PFK-2 and fructose 2,6-bisphosphatase are one and the same protein. Phosphorylation-dephosphorylation actually shifts the activity of this single protein between the kinase and the phosphatase. So the answer you get should be opposite to the one we got earlier. 

Caroni P, Carafoli E (1981) Regulation of Ca2+ -pumping ATPase of heart sarcolemma by a phosphorylation-dephosphorylation process. J Biol Chem 256 3262-3270... 

There are many examples of phosphorylation/dephosphorylation control of enzymes found in carbohydrate, fat and amino acid metabolism and most are ultimately under the control of a hormone induced second messenger usually, cytosolic cyclic AMP (cAMP). PDH is one of the relatively few mitochondrial enzymes to show covalent modification control, but PDH kinase and PDH phosphatase are controlled primarily by allosteric effects of NADH, acetyl-CoA and calcium ions rather than cAMP (see Table 6.6). 

Hasbi, A., Allouche, S., Sichel, F., et al. (2000) Internalization and recycling of delta-opioid receptor are dependent on a phosphorylation-dephosphorylation mechanism. J. Biol. Chem. 293, 237-247. 

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