Racker

The mitochondrial complex that carries out ATP synthesis is called ATP synthase or sometimes FjFo-ATPase (for the reverse reaction it catalyzes). ATP synthase was observed in early electron micrographs of submitochondrial particles (prepared by sonication of inner membrane preparations) as round, 8.5-nm-diameter projections or particles on the inner membrane (Figure 21.23). In micrographs of native mitochondria, the projections appear on the matrixfacing surface of the inner membrane. Mild agitation removes the particles from isolated membrane preparations, and the isolated spherical particles catalyze ATP hydrolysis, the reverse reaction of the ATP synthase. Stripped of these particles, the membranes can still carry out electron transfer but cannot synthesize ATP. In one of the first reconstitution experiments with membrane proteins, Efraim Racker showed that adding the particles back to stripped membranes restored electron transfer-dependent ATP synthesis. 

Racker and Stoeckenius Confirmed the Mitchell Model in a Reconstitution Experiment... 

When Mitchell first described his chemiosmotic hypothesis in 1961, little evidence existed to support it, and it was met with considerable skepticism by the scientific community. Eventually, however, considerable evidence accumulated to support this model. It is now clear that the electron transport chain generates a proton gradient, and careful measurements have shown that ATP is synthesized when a pH gradient is applied to mitochondria that cannot carry out electron transport. Even more relevant is a simple but crucial experiment reported in 1974 by Efraim Racker and Walther Stoeckenius, which provided specific confirmation of the Mitchell hypothesis. In this experiment, the bovine mitochondrial ATP synthasereconstituted in simple lipid vesicles with bac-teriorhodopsin, a light-driven proton pump from Halobaeterium halobium. As shown in Eigure 21.28, upon illumination, bacteriorhodopsin pumped protons... 

FIGURE 21.28 The reconstituted vesicles containing ATP synthase and bacteriorhodopsin used by Stoeckenius and Racker to confirm the Mitchell chemiosmotic hypothesis. 

Abf(ill apparati m. emptying apparatus, etc. (see abfullen) Brewing) racker. blitte, /. Brewing) racking square. abfilUen, v.t. empty, draw off (wine, etc.), drain off rack, decant take off, skim off (scum or dross). 

Kagawa, Y., and Racker, E. (1971). Partial resolution of the enzymes catalyzing oxidative phosphorylation, J. Biol. Chem., 246, 5477-5487. 

Racker et al. have developed an interesting new combinatorial method for the synthesis of [l,4]oxazepin-7-ones (eg 139, R = Ph) from aldehydes and a-amino alcohols with the Baylis-Hillman reaction being a key step . 

The reversibility of reaction (8) has not been observed as yet (H20, M3, R4) and may be attributed to other systems (M2), such as assumed by Racker (R2), the oxidation of GSH to GSSG being coupled to the reduction of homocystine under control of a transhydrogenase. 

R2. Racker, E., Glutathione-homocystine transhydrogenase. ]. Biol. Chem. 217, 867-874 (1955). 

The reaction catalyzed by KDO 8-phosphate synthetase (reaction 2, Scheme 35) was first observed by Levin and Racker9 in extracts from Pseudomonas aeruginosa (see Scheme 1), and later by Ghalambor and Heath29 in extracts from Escherichia coli 0111 B4 and J-5. In the initial experiments of Levin and Racker,135 the fate of D-ribose 5-phosphate in crude bacterial extracts was studied, and the KDO 8-phosphate discovered by the authors is really derived from D-ribose 5-phosphate by three, sequential, enzyme-catalyzed reactions (see Scheme 36). 

These circumstances became apparent to the authors when they attempted to study the formation of KDO 8-phosphate as catalyzed by purified bacterial extracts. These extracts did not catalyze the formation of KDO 8-phosphate from D-ribose 5-phosphate, but required D-arabinose 5-phosphate as the substrate Heath and Ghalambor29 showed that the KDO 8-phosphate synthetase reaction, observed in Pseudomonas extracts by Levin and Racker, is also catalyzed by extracts from Escherichia coli strains 0 111 B4 and J-5. Rick and Osborn136 showed that the KDO 8-phosphate synthetase from a Salmonella typhimurium mutant conditionally defective in cell-wall synthesis had a KM of 6 mM as compared to a KM of 170 pM for the enzyme from wild-type cells. 

Between 1955 and 1960 various sub-mitochondrial preparations were developed to give vesicles comprising only sealed inner mitochondrial membranes. Cooper and Lehninger used digitonin extraction Lardy and Kielley Bronk prepared sub-mitochondrial particles by sonication. At this time, too, Racker and his colleagues isolated Fq/F1 particles from mitochondria and showed that a separated FI particle behaved as an ATPase. The F0 portion had no enzymic properties but conferred oligomycin sensitivity on the FI ATPase. The orientation of these sub-mitochondrial vesicles (inside-out or vice-versa) was shown by the position in electron micrographs of the dense (FI) particles which in normal intact mitochondria project into the matrix and so define the surface of the inner mitochondrial membrane. 

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