Increased muscle phosphorylase in rats fed high levels of vitamin B6

The present study was undertaken to test the hypothesis that muscle phosphorylase may function as a repository for vitamin B6 in the animal. Since a repository would be expected to accumulate surplus material, one would predict that phosphorylase, which contains stoichio-metric amounts or pyridoxal phosphate, would increase in muscle of animals surfeited with the vitamin. Rats were fed a vitamin B6-free diet supplemented with pyridoxine providing levels 10, 1.0 and 0.1 of those recommended by the National Research Council (NRC). At the high intake level, muscle phosphorylase and total muscle vitamin B6 increased steadily and in almost constant ratio for at least 6 weeks, whereas both alanine and aspartate transaminase increased initially, but reached a plateau within 2 weeks. At the intermediate level of pyridoxine intake, muscle phosphorylase also increased, but less rapidly than in rats fed the higher level. When vitamin B6 intake was restricted to 10% of the NRC-recommended level, no increase in phosphorylase concentration occurred during a period of 10 weeks. These results support the hypothesis that muscle phosphorylase acts as a reservoir for vitamin B6 in the animal and provide experimental evidence that muscle enzyme content expands as vitamin is accumulated during high dietary intake.