Proteinase-catalyzed activation of porcine heart muscle pyruvate dehydrogenase and identification of its cleavage site.
Porcine heart muscle pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH, EC 1.2.4.1) with subunit composition alpha 2 beta 2 catalyzes the initial decarboxylation step of an oxidative decarboxylation sequence of pyruvate. Highly purified PDH, was further activated several-fold by limited digestion with trypsin, Staphylococcus aureus V8 proteinase (V8) or papain. The activation with these proteinases required about 10 min to attain a maximal level, lasted 1/2-2 h and thereafter decreased gradually. Addition of an inhibitor of each proteinase resulted in an immediate cessation of any further changes in the enzymatic activity. The optimal pH of the proteinase-activated PDH was not affected. Proteinases increased the maximum velocity and the apparent Km values for pyruvate, but the Hill coefficients for pyruvate were unchanged. Proteinase-activated PDH was capable of associating two other component enzymes to produce large unit resembling the native complex. The Coomassie brilliant blue stained gels after SDS-PAGE showed that the PDH alpha subunit (41 kDa) was cleaved by trypsin or V8 into two major fragments (31 and 10 kDa), whereas PDH beta was unaffected. By amino-terminal sequence analyses of these fragments the trypsin cleavage sites were identified as Arg-273 and Arg-282 and the V8 cleavage sites were Glu-277 and Glu-280.