Identification of gastric mucosal mucus glycoprotein sulfotransferase

Sulfation of mucus glycoproteins, reaction catalyzed by Golgi resident sulfotransferase, is an important event in posttranslational processing of gastric mucins. Here we report the purification of mucus glycoprotein sulfotransferase enzyme from the microsomal fraction of rat gastric mucosa. The enzyme was released from the membrane with 0.5% Triton X-100 and precipitated from the 100,000xg supernatant with 90% ice-cold acetone. The enzyme activity (44.7 pmol/mg/45 min) in the precipitate was enriched nearly 10-fold compared to Triton X-100 extract of microsomal membrane (4.2 pmol/mg/45 min). On SDS-PAGE, the enzyme gave a single 43 kDa protein band, which was active towards mucin, but did not catalyze the sulfation of galactosylceramide. The study is the first to report the characteristics of a sulfotransferase enzyme specific for gastric mucin.