Growth-related enzymatic control of glycogen metabolism in cultured human tumor cells

The activities of glycogen synthase and phosphorylase were measured and compared to the growth-related variations of glycogen accumulation in three cultured human tumor cell lines: HT-29 (colon carcinoma); MeWo (malignant melanoma); and RT-4 (carcinoma of the urinary bladder). A similar pattern of variations in the enzyme activities was found in the three cell lines. The activities of the a + b forms of glycogen phosphorylase increased throughout the culture period. Maximal activity of phosphorylase a coincided with low intracellular concentrations of glycogen during the period of exponential growth. When the rate of cell division decreased, phosphorylase a activity also decreased while the glycogen levels increased. Glycogen synthase was almost entirely in b form during the entire culture period, i.e., in both the exponential and the stationary phases. In vitro incubation of the cellular extracts without NaF showed, however, that the enzyme could be partially converted to the a form by the endogenous phosphatases. The A0.5 values of the enzyme for glucose-6-phosphate (Glc-6-P) were of the same order of magnitude as the intracellular Glc-6-P concentrations which ranged from 2.2 to 5.4 mM (almost 10 times those reported in normal cells). Similar Glc-6-P values were obtained by two different extraction methods controlled by the intracellular ATP and ADP concentrations. The Km values for uridine-5'-diphosphoglucose were always 2 to 3 times lower than the intracellular uridine-5'-diphosphoglucose concentrations. These results suggest that: (a) in these tumor cells, glycogen is essentially synthesized by glycogen synthase b via an allosteric activation by intracellular Glc-6-P; (b) there is no obvious growth-related control of glycogen synthase activity; and (c) the activity of glycogen phosphorylase seems to be growth dependent with maximal phosphorylase a activities associated with the period of high division rate.