Sea urchin sperm guanylate cyclase. Purification and loss of cooperativity

The Lubrol-dispersed guanylate cyclase from sea urchin sperm was purified and isolated essentially free of detergent by GTP affinity chromatography, DEAE-Sephadex chromatography, and gel filtration. After removal of the detergent, the enzyme remained in solution in the presence of 20% glycerol. The specific activity of the purified enzyme was about 12 mumol of guanosine 3':5'-monophosphate (cyclic GMP) formed - min-1 - mg of protein-1 at 30 degrees, an activity about 4600 times that of a soluble guanylate cyclase purified recently from Escherichia coli (Macchia V., Varrone, S., Weissbach, H., Miller, D.L., and Pastan, I. (1975) J. Biol. Chem. 250, 6214-6217). The cyclic GMP phosphodiesterase activity was negligible and adenosine 3':5'-monophosphate (cyclic AMP) phosphodiesterase was not detectable in the purified preparation. Cyclic AMP formation from ATP occurred at a rate of 0.002% of that of guanylate cyclase. In the absence of phosphodiesterase or guanosine triphosphatase inhibitors, 100% of the added GTP was converted to cyclic GMP. The purified enzyme required Mn2+ for maximum activity, the relative rates in the presence of Mg2+ or Ca2+ being less than 0.6% of the rates with Mn2+. The purified enzyme displayed classical Michaelis-Menten kinetics with respect to MnGTP (apparent Km is approximately equal to 170 muM) in contrast to the positively cooperative kinetic behavior displayed by the unpurified, detergent-dispersed, or particulate guanylate cyclase. The molecular weight of the purified enzyme was approximately 182,000 as estimated on Bio-Gel A-0.5m columns equilibrated in the presence or absence of 0.1 M NaCl. The unpurified, detergent-dispersed enzyme also migrated with an apparent molecular weight of 182,000 on columns equilibrated with 0.5% Lubrol WX and 0.1 M NaCl, but it migrated as a large aggregate (molecular weight is greater than 5 X 10(5)) on columns equilibrated in the absence of either the detergent of NaCl. After gel filtration, the unpurified, dispersed enzyme still yielded positive cooperative kinetic patterns as a function of MnGTP. Na dodecyl-SO4 gel electrophoresis of the enzyme after the DEAE-Sephadex or the gel filtration steps resulted in two major protein bands with estimated molecular weights of 118,000 and 75,000. Whether or not these protein bands represent the subunit molecular weights of guanylate cyclase is unknown at present.