Abstract
BackgroundThe wood frog, Rana sylvatica, is one of a few vertebrate species that have developed natural freeze tolerance, surviving days or weeks with 65–70% of its total body water frozen in extracellular ice masses. Frozen frogs exhibit no vital signs and their organs must endure multiple stresses, particularly long term anoxia and ischemia. Maintenance of cellular energy supply is critical to viability in the frozen state and in skeletal muscle, AMP deaminase (AMPD) plays a key role in stabilizing cellular energetics. The present study investigated AMPD control in wood frog muscle.ResultsWood frog AMPD was subject to multiple regulatory controls: binding to subcellular structures, protein phosphorylation, and effects of allosteric effectors, cryoprotectants and temperature. The percentage of bound AMPD activity increased from 20 to 35% with the transition to the frozen state. Bound AMPD showed altered kinetic parameters compared with the free enzyme (S0.5 AMP was reduced, Hill coefficient fell to ~1.0) and the transition to the frozen state led to a 3-fold increase in S0.5 AMP of the bound enzyme. AMPD was a target of protein phosphorylation. Bound AMPD from control frogs proved to be a low phosphate form with a low S0.5 AMP and was phosphorylated in incubations that stimulated PKA, PKC, CaMK, or AMPK. Bound AMPD from frozen frogs was a high phosphate form with a high S0.5 AMP that was reduced under incubation conditions that stimulated protein phosphatases. Frog muscle AMPD was activated by Mg·ATP and Mg·ADP and inhibited by Mg·GTP, KCl, NaCl and NH4Cl. The enzyme product, IMP, uniquely inhibited only the bound (phosphorylated) enzyme from muscle of frozen frogs. Activators and inhibitors differentially affected the free versus bound enzyme. S0.5 AMP of bound AMPD was also differentially affected by high versus low assay temperature (25 vs 5°C) and by the presence/absence of the natural cryoprotectant (250 mM glucose) that accumulates during freezing.ConclusionMaintenance of long term viability under the ischemic conditions in frozen muscle requires attention to the control of cellular energetics. Differential regulatory controls on AMPD by mechanisms including binding to muscle proteins, actions allosteric effectors, glucose and temperature effects and reversible phosphorylation adjust enzyme function for an optimal role in controlling cellular adenylate levels in ischemic frozen muscle. Stable modification of AMPD properties via freeze-responsive phosphorylation may contribute both to AMPD control and to coordinating AMPD function with other enzymes of energy metabolism in cold ischemic muscle.
Highlights
The wood frog, Rana sylvatica, is one of a few vertebrate species that have developed natural freeze tolerance, surviving days or weeks with 65–70% of its total body water frozen in extracellular ice masses
Activity and kinetic parameters of AMP deaminase (AMPD) in crude extracts of skeletal muscle AMPD is known to bind to myosin and a portion of total activity remains bound in the pellet after normal homogenization and centrifugation
The total activity of AMPD in wood frog muscle was 22–28 units per gram wet weight (U/gww) and the majority of activity was in the soluble fraction (Table 1)
Summary
The wood frog, Rana sylvatica, is one of a few vertebrate species that have developed natural freeze tolerance, surviving days or weeks with 65–70% of its total body water frozen in extracellular ice masses. The freezing of 65–70% of total body water in extracellular and extra-organ spaces halts heart beat and breathing and rapidly leads to conditions of anoxia and ischemia [3,12] These conditions place energy stress on cells and over time the tissues of frozen frogs build up glycolytic end products (lactate, alanine) and deplete ATP [13]. If AMP is removed from the adenylate pool, the AEC ratio can be kept at a high value at the expense of an overall reduction in adenylate pool size This mechanism is commonly seen in working skeletal muscle and under a variety of environmental stress conditions that compromise energy reserves such as hypoxia, ischemia [14,15], freezing [13] or during torpor in hibernating mammals [16]
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