J. Delarosa et al., CHROMOSOMAL LOCALIZATION AND CATALYTIC PROPERTIES OF THE RECOMBINANT ALPHA-SUBUNIT OF HUMAN LYMPHOCYTE METHIONINE ADENOSYLTRANSFERASE, The Journal of biological chemistry, 270(37), 1995, pp. 21860-21868
Human lymphocyte methionine adenosyltransferase (HuLy MAT) consists of
heterologous subunits alpha and beta. The cDNA sequence of the alpha
subunit of HuLy MAT from Jurkat leukemic T cells was identical to that
of the human kidney alpha subunit and highly homologous to the sequen
ce of the extrahepatic MAT from other sources, The 3'-untranslated seq
uence was found to be highly conserved, suggesting that it may be impo
rtant in regulating the expression of MAT. The extrahepatic alpha subu
nit of MAT was found to be expressed also in human liver, and no diffe
rences were found in the sequence of the alpha subunit from normal and
malignant T cells, The sequence of two unspliced introns found in the
cDNA clones from the Jurkat library enabled us to isolate genomic clo
nes harboring the human extrahepatic alpha subunit gene and to localiz
e it to the centromere on chromosome arm 2p, an area that corresponds
to band 2p11.2. Expression of the alpha subunit cDNA in Escherichia co
li yielded two peptides with the immunoreactivity and mobilities of au
thentic alpha/alpha' subunits from HuLy, The K-m of the recombinant al
pha subunit was 80 mu M, which is 20-fold higher than found for the (a
lpha alpha')(x) beta(y) holoenzyme purified from leukemic lymphocytes
and 4-10-fold higher than found for the normal lymphocyte enzyme. The
data suggest that the alpha/alpha' subunits mediate the enzyme catalyt
ic activity and that the beta subunit may be a regulatory subunit of e
xtrahepatic MAT.