Purification of rat liver nuclear protein kinase NII

Rat liver nuclear protein kinase activity (NII), which is eluted from DEAE-Sephadex columns, has been purified approximately 1500-fold from solubilized nuclear protein. The method of purification involved chromatography of protein eluted from DEAE-Sephadex successively on phosvitin-Sepharose, mixed histone-Sepharose, and histone H2b-Sepharose followed by gel filtration on Sephadex G-200. Resulting preparations are homogeneous by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. The enzyme consists of three polypeptides with molecular weights of 42,000 (alpha), 39,000 (alpha'), and 26,000 (beta) which are present in the ratio 1:1:2 indicating that the enzyme has a minimum tetrameric subunit composition of alphaalpha'beta2. The molecular weight and s20,w of the purified enzyme were 123,000 and 7.0, respectively, as determined by sucrose density gradient centrifugation in 0.4 M NaCl. The enzyme has maximal activity with phosvitin as substrate and is not stimulated by 10(-5) to 10(-4) M cAMP or cGMP using H2b as substrate.