Effect of Na+ ions on pH-dependent conformational changes in brush border sucrase-isomaltase in mice intestine.

Intestinal brush border sucrase-isomaltase (sucrose D-glucosidase E.C. 3.2.1.48, E.C. 3.2.1.10) exhibits pH-dependent stimulatory or inhibitory effects in response to Na+ ions. However, whether the enzyme undergoes conformational modulations as a function of pH and in the presence of alkali metal ions is not known. In this paper, we investigated the structural and functional relationship of purified murine sucrase in response to pH and Na+ ions using UV-CD fluorescence and spectroscopic studies. Kinetic studies revealed that at pH 5.0, the enzyme activation by Na+ ions was V-type, which changed to K-type at pH 7.2, whereas at alkaline pH (8.5), Na+ ions inhibited the enzyme activity and inhibition was uncompetitive in nature, affecting both the Km and Vmax components. Far UV-CD spectra of protein at pH 7.2 in the absence and presence of Na+ were almost overlapping, suggesting that secondary structure of protein was not affected upon addition of the salt. However, near UV-CD spectra indicated marked alterations in the tertiary structure of protein in presence of 50 mM Na+ ions. Increase in pH from 7.2 to 8.5 resulted in a marked rise in fluorescence intensity and red shift in lambda max due to tryptophan residues in the enzyme molecule. These findings suggested that alterations in enzyme activity as a function of pH and Na+ ions was associated with ionization of key amino acid residues together with structural modifications in the enzyme conformation around neutral or alkaline pH.

Effect of pH, temperature and alcohols on the stability of glycosylated and deglycosylated stem bromelain.

The biological significance of the carbohydrate moiety of a glycoprotein has been a matter of much speculation. In the present work, we have chosen stem bromelain from Ananas comosus as a model to investigate the role of glycosylation of proteins. Stem bromelain is a thiol protease which contains a single hetero-oligosaccharide unit per molecule. Here, the deglycosylated form of the enzyme was obtained by periodate oxidation. The differences in the glycosylated and deglycosylated forms of the glycoprotein have been studied at various temperatures and pH values, using probes such as loss of enzyme activity and by the changes in fluorescence and circular dichroism spectra. Deglycosylated bromelain showed decreased enzyme activity and perturbed fluorescence and circular dichroism spectra. In addition to this, a comparative study of their activities in different organic solvents showed a marked decrease in case of deglycosylated form of the enzyme. It is thus concluded that glycosylation contributes towards the functional stability of glycoenzymes.