Pyruvate kinase, glucagon

Pyruvate kinase possesses allosteric sites for numerous effectors. It is activated by AMP and fructose-1,6-bisphosphate and inhibited by ATP, acetyl-CoA, and alanine. (Note that alanine is the a-amino acid counterpart of the a-keto acid, pyruvate.) Furthermore, liver pyruvate kinase is regulated by covalent modification. Flormones such as glucagon activate a cAMP-dependent protein kinase, which transfers a phosphoryl group from ATP to the enzyme. The phos-phorylated form of pyruvate kinase is more strongly inhibited by ATP and alanine and has a higher for PEP, so that, in the presence of physiological levels of PEP, the enzyme is inactive. Then PEP is used as a substrate for glucose synthesis in the pathway (to be described in Chapter 23), instead... 

Decrease of cAMP, the second messenger of glucagon. Induction of pyruvate kinase and glycerinaldehyde dehydrogenase... 

Pyruvate kinase T T Insulin, fructose Glucagon (cAMP) Fructose 1,6-bisphosphate, insulin ATP, alanine, glucagon (cAMP), epinephrine... 

The hormones glucagon, cortisol and insulin regulate the concentrations of some enzymes and hence their activities. These include glucokinase, pyruvate kinase and phospho-enolpyruvate carboxykinase. Most work has been carried out on the carboxykinase enzyme, for which it is known that glucagon and cortisol increase the concentration whereas insulin decreases it. These changes are brought about at the transcriptional level by changing the activity of transcription factors (Chapter 20). Since the hormones... 

Pyruvate kinase catalyzes the third irreversible step in glycolysis. It is activated by fructose 1,6-bisphosphate. ATP and the amino acid alanine allosterically inhibit the enzyme so that glycolysis slows when supplies of ATP and biosynthetic precursors (indicated by the levels of Ala) are already sufficiently high. In addition, in a control similar to that for PFK (see above), when the blood glucose concentration is low, glucagon is released and stimulates phosphorylation of the enzyme via a cAMP cascade (see Topic J7). This covalent modification inhibits the enzyme so that glycolysis slows down in times of low blood glucose levels. 

During starvation, the priority is to conserve blood glucose for the brain and muscle. Thus, under these conditions, pyruvate kinase in the liver is switched off. This occurs because the hormone glucagon is secreted into the bloodstream and activates a cAMP cascade (see Topic J7) that leads to the phosphorylation and inhibition of this enzyme. 

The enzyme that catalyzes the conversion of PEP to pyruvate is pyruvate kinase. Liver pyruvate kinase is stimulated allosterically by fructose-1,6-diphosphate, AMP, ADP, and glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate. It is inhibited by alanine, ATP, NADH, and, more importantly, by cAMP- and Ca2 calmodulin-controlled phosphorylation. High blood glucagon levels thus inhibit the activities of both PFK II and pyruvate kinase in the liver through phosphorylation. Transcription of pyruvate kinase is also decreased by glucagon and increased by insulin. Muscle pyruvate kinase is not subject to cAMP or Ca2+ regulation. The pyruvate kinase reaction is practically irreversible. 

Fig. 6. Effects of glucagon (1 nM) on the activities of phosphorylase a, glycogen synthase and pyruvate kinase in isolated rat hepatocytes. Reproduced from Ref. 58 by permission of the author and publisher.

There is now abundant evidence that the activity of pyruvate kinase is inhibited by glucagon in intact liver preparations [58,108] (Fig. 6), leading to reduced flux of... 

Glucagon decreases cholesterol synthesis in isolated hepatocytes [131,132] apparently because it reduces the fraction of hydroxymethylglutaryl-CoA reductase in the active form [131,132], This is due to an increase in reductase kinase activity [133], However, there is no evidence that cAMP-dependent protein kinase phos-phorylates either the reductase, reductase kinase or reductase kinase kinase [134], It has been proposed that the phosphorylation state of these enzymes is indirectly controlled through changes in the activity of protein phosphatase I [132,134], This phosphatase can dephosphorylate and activate the reductase [134,135] and its activity can be controlled by a heat stable inhibitor (inhibitor 1), the activity of which is increased by cAMP-dependent phosphorylation [136,137], Since the phosphorylated forms of acetyl-CoA carboxylase, ATP-citrate lyase, pyruvate kinase, phos-phorylase, phosphorylase kinase and glycogen synthase are also substrates for protein phosphatase I [135], this mechanism could also contribute to their phosphorylation by glucagon. 

Glucagon via cAMP activates protein kinase A, which phosphoiy-lates and inactivates pyruvate kinase. 

C) Inactivation of pyruvate kinase when glucagon levels are elevated... 

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