Tentoxin-induced binding of adenine nucleotides to soluble spinach chloroplast coupling factor 1

The effect of tentoxin on the binding of adenine nucleotides to soluble chloroplast coupling factor (CF1) has been studied and the following results have been obtained: 1. Tentoxin (400 micron) increases the maximum attainable tight binding of ADP to CF1. In the absence of tentoxin, the maximal binding observed by the method employed is about 0.3 nmol ADP/mg protein, whereas in the presence of tentoxin this ranges from 1.5 to 2.0 nmol ADP/mg protein. 2. Tentoxin-induced binding of ADP to CF1 is severely inhibited by divalent cations (50% inhibition at about 2 mM) but only weakly inhibited by monovalent cations (less than 50% inhibition at 100 mM). 3. The binding of ADP to CF1 induced by tentoxin is inhibited by ATP and adenylyl imidodiphosphate but is not inhibited by other nucleotides including AMP, GDP, CDP, IDP, or beta, gamma-methylene ATP. 4. The ADP-CF1 complex induced by tentoxin is quite stable. 75% remains bound to CF1 even after passage of the complex through a gel filtration column. An additional 25% can be removed by incubation in the presence of ADP, and all of the bound ADP can be removed only after incubation in the presence of both tentoxin and ADP. The latter result is interpreted as a tentoxin-induced exchange of bound ADP for medium ADP.