Characterization of alcohol dehydrogenase from cultured rat hepatoma (HTC) cells

The highly active alcohol dehydrogenase (EC 1.1.1.1) in rat hepatic tumor cells (HTC) was purified 120-fold by chromatography on DEAE-Sepharose and AMP-Agarose to yield an enzyme with a specific activity of 88 mumole/min/mg protein, assayed with 1.7 mM NAD+ and 0.55 M ethanol at pH 9 and 30 degrees C. (By comparison, purified, normal rat liver enzyme has an activity of about 1 unit/mg.) Based on its physical and kinetic properties, we conclude that the HTC isozyme is the same as the enzyme from rat stomach and another rat hepatoma (Cederbaum AI, Pietruszko R, Hempel J, Becker FF, and Rubin E (1975) Arch Biochem Biophys 171:348-360). The kinetics of the HTC enzyme are consistent with the Ordered Bi Bi mechanism. The kinetic constants are generally much larger for the HTC enzyme than for the normal rat liver enzyme. The Michaelis constants for ethanol and acetaldehyde (Kb = 1100 mM, Kp = 260 mM) are 1000-fold larger, and the constants for NADH are 10 to 50-fold larger. Although the HTC enzyme has low catalytic efficiency (V/Kb) on ethanol, it has much better activity on longer chain alcohols, but no activity on cyclohexanol. The pH dependence of V/Kb with ethanol is unusual in that it appears to be a linear function of pH, increasing with a slope of 0.56. Thus, the active sites of the liver and HTC enzymes may be different, although the HTC enzyme is inactivated by bromoacetate and bipyridine as is found for the liver enzyme. The HTC (stomach) enzyme may function to oxidize high concentrations of ingested ethanol or longer chain alcohols.