Abstract
The relationship between three activities of the reticulocytes, potassium fluxes carried out by the cell membrane, ATP metabolism and protein synthesis are studied here. By comparing the three activities as a function of increased concentration of two potassium ionophores, valinomycin and dicyclohexyl-18-crown-6 (DC) the existence of coupling between these three activities was suggested. We found two antagonistic effects of valinomycin on potassium efflux: (1) it inhibited potassium efflux at concentrations below 10nM; (2) it increased K efflux as expected, at concentrations above 20nM. Dicyclohexyl-18-crown-6, a macrocyclic polyether only reduced the membrane potassium efflux. The two potassium ionophores, while inhibiting potassium efflux out of the reticulocytes, parallely inhibited protein synthesis. They also produced a parallel decrease in ATP ADP ratio, which was small with valinomycin and much higher with dicyclohexyl-18-crown-6. We were able to present here data suggesting that protein synthesis mechanism is coupled to the membrane activity, with the ATP metabolism as a probable intermediate.
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