The renal handling of human urinary ribonuclease by rat kidneys

The purpose of the study was to find out how poly(C)-avid human urinary ribonuclease is handled by the kidney. Purified human urinary ribonuclease (molecular weight 33 000) was radiolabelled with 125I. The enzyme was injected intravenously into dogs and monkeys with and without kidneys. The disappearance rate from the animals without kidneys was markedly prolonged. In the dog and monkey with kidneys, the radiolabelled enzyme which was infused was recovered in the urine unchanged. No large molecular weight fragments were found. When 125I-labelled ribonuclease was infused into rats the material recovered in the urine was primarily identical with the material infused. A very small fraction of the material recovered was found to contain some fragments which had chromatographic characteristics of monoiodotyrosine and diiodotyrosine. Two other fragments were detected but could not be identified. Autoradiographic studies of the rat kidneys also showed some reabsorption of the radiolabelled ribonuclease, particularly in the proximal tubules. With electron microscopy the radiolabelled material could be seen in the lysosomes. These observations corroborate findings discovered for other low molecular enzyme such as lysozyme (molecular weight 14 000) and suggest that the human ribonuclease is mainly excreted by the kidneys unchanged and that a minor amount may be reabsorbed by the proximal tubules and metabolized in the lysosomes.