Separation of different forms of S-adenosylmethionine synthetase by fast protein liquid chromatography

A method is described by which different forms of S-adenosylmethionine synthetase are separated. The method makes use of fast protein liquid chromatography on an anion exchange hydrophilic polyether resin. Different forms of S-adenosylmethionine synthetase from rat and human liver and kidney and rat zajdela hepatoma cells can be separated within 15 min. From a mixture of rat liver and kidney cytosols all three forms alpha, beta and gamma can be separated. The time needed to separate the different forms of S-adenosylmethionine synthetase is reduced from 3 h with conventional gel filtration methods, to 15 min using this HPLC anion-exchange method. Also the amount of tissue needed to detect the different forms is reduced from 125 mg to 12.5 mg of fresh rat liver tissue. These advantages make this newly developed method applicable when large numbers of samples have to be analyzed or when only small amounts of tissue are available.