The purification and characterization of rat liver lysosomal alpha-L-fucosidase

The alpha-L-fucosidase from rat liver lysosomes was purified approximately 27,000-fold (from cytoplasmic extract) by a rapid procedure requiring only 7 h anf providing enzyme in a 20 per cent yield. The procedure is based upon affinity chromatography with agarose-epsilon-aminocaproyl-fucosamine. The isolated enzyme was found to be pure by a number of different analytical gel techniques and is essentially free of other lysosomal gylcosidases. The purified enzyme exhibits a positive periodic acid-Schiff stain, suggesting that it is a glycoprotein. The purified enzyme has a pH optimum of 5.7 to 5.9, a Vmax of 27 mumol/min/mg of protein, and a Km of 0.19 mM with p-nitrophenyl alpha-L-fucopyranoside as substrate. L-Fucose was the only possibly physiological effector of the enzyme which was identified; it exhibited a Ki of 1.6 mM, with p-nitrophenyl alpha-L-fucopyranoside as substrate. The enzyme has a subunit molecular weight of approximately 55,000 by Na dodecyl-SO4 electrophoresis in a variety of gel systems. The molecular weight of the native enzyme was indicated to be approximately 160,000 by sucrose density centrifugation, 300,000 by molecular sieve chromatography on Sephadex G-200, and 217,000 by sedimentation equilibrium centrifugation. The weight of evidence suggests that the enzyme is a tetramer. Incubation on the absence of sulfhydryl reagents under appropriate conditions generates a second alpha-L-fucosidase activity band on gels corresponding to a molecular weight of approximately 40,000 to 50,000. This result suggests that the subunit is relatively stable and may reassociate to form active enzyme. Alpha-L-Fucosidase requires a high concentration of protein and the presence of a sulfhydryl reagent for stabilization. It is rapidly inactivated by p-chloromercuriphenyl sulfonic acid, this inactivation being rapidly reversible by the addition of 10 mM 2-mercaptoethanol. The enzyme catalyzed the hydrolysis of 1 leads to 2, 1 leads to 3, and 1 leads to 4 fucosyl linkages and was found to be active on glycopeptides but not on native glycoproteins. The amino acid and carbohydrate composition of the enzyme was determined. The native enzyme contains the following sugars (residues per tetramer): fucose (3.5), mannose (32), galactose (8), glucose (9), glucosamine (32), and sialic acid (8). Rat liver lysosomal alpha-glucosidase, also produced in the rapid isolation procedure described herein, contained less than 0.1 residue of sialic acid per subunit.