Intramuscular enzyme abnormalities of dystrophic chickens compared to those of dystrophic mice

The present study was performed to investigate the enzymatic changes in dystrophic chickens compared to those of dystrophic mice. The activities of 14 kinds of aminopeptidases, 5 kinds of endopeptidase, 4 kinds of glycosidases, phosphatase, esterase, and ribonuclease were measured in muscles of control and dystrophic chickens. When the enzyme activities were expressed as specific activity per unit weight of organs, only some of them were found to be significantly elevated in dystrophic chickens; e.g., alanine aminopeptidase (Ala-AP), Gly-AP and cathepsin D. On the contrary, the activities of alpha-D-glycosidase, alpha-D-galactosidase and alpha-D-mannosidase were significantly decreased. Muscular protein contents of dystrophic chickens also tended to be lower than those of controls. These observations offer a striking contrast with the one obtained in the study on dystrophic mice. However, when expressed as specific activity per mg protein, many enzyme activities were found to be significantly elevated suggesting an extensive abnormality of metabolism in dystrophic chickens. Among 14 kinds of aminopeptidase activities, highly significant elevations were seen especially in AP-A, AP-B, Gly-AP, Ala-AP, Ser-AP, Pro-AP, Leu-AP, Met-AP and Trp-AP. Interestingly enough, a statistical approach suggested a significant correlation between the aminopeptidase changes of dystrophic chickens with those of dystrophic mice. In addition to aminopeptidases, there were highly significant increases in the activities of cathepsin D, alpha-D-glucosidase, beta-D-galactosidase, alpha-D-mannosidase, esterase and RNase. These results indicate that the intramuscular metabolic abnormality of dystrophic chickens are generally different from but partly resembled with those of dystrophic mice.