|
|
||||||||
Articles |
1
Department of Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Tübingen, Wilhelmstrasse 56, D-72074 Tübingen, Germany.
2
Department of Pharmacology, Kyowa Hakko Kogyo Co. Ltd,
Mishima 411-8731, Japan.
a Author for correspondence. Fax 49-07071-294942; e-mail doris.kloor{at}uni-tuebingen.de
| Abstract |
|---|
|
|
|---|
Methods: SAH hydrolase was purified to apparent homogeneity from bovine kidney by standard chromatographic methods. SAH hydrolase was converted in its reduced form, which had the advantage that the SAH hydrolase is enzymatically inactive. This reduced enzyme retains its ability to bind adenosine with high affinity. To determine adenosine in urine or tissues, samples must be deproteinized (e.g., with 10 g/L sulfosalicylic acid or 0.6 mol/L perchloric acid).
Results: The reduced SAH hydrolase bound adenosine with a dissociation constant of 33.0 ± 2 nmol/L. Displacement of adenosine binding by the adenine 5'-nucleotides, adenine and hypoxanthine, required >1000-fold higher concentrations than adenosine itself. The intra- and interassay imprecision (CV) was <3.9% and 7.8%, respectively, and the values obtained showed acceptable correlation with those by HPLC.
Conclusions: The highly sensitive adenosine-binding protein assay is a simple test that allows detection of adenosine in samples with small volumes without purification, and is in this respect superior to HPLC.
| Introduction |
|---|
|
|
|---|
10-8 to
10-9 mol/L (13) and because the
intracellular free adenosine concentration is estimated as
10-8 mol/L (14), the concentration
of adenosine is at or below the limit of detection of most
analytical methods. Most of the described methods require either
expensive equipment or prepurification or succinylation of
adenosine-containing samples. HPLC procedures either use prior
purification or lack adequate sensitivity and require large amounts of
samples (15). In addition tissue, plasma, urine, and
cerebrospinal fluid also contain adenine nucleotides, and a
specific method is necessary for reliable estimations. Here we describe a sensitive and specific adenosine-binding protein assay (ABPA) for detection of adenosine in samples that can be directly applied to deproteinized specimens.
| Materials and Methods |
|---|
|
|
|---|
All other chemicals were of analytical grade and obtained from Merck.
enzyme purification
SAH hydrolase was purified from bovine kidney with chromatographic
techniques as described previously (16). The purified enzyme
was frozen at -20 °C until use.
protein determination
Protein concentrations were determined according to the method of
Bradford (17), using bovine serum albumin as the
calibrator.
enzyme activity of sah hydrolase
The SAH hydrolysis activity was assayed in a total volume of 1 mL
at 20 °C. The reaction mixture contained 80 µmol/L SAH, 2 kU/L
adenosine deaminase, 0.8 kU/L nucleoside phosphorylase, 0.8 kU/L
xanthine oxidase, and 50 mmol/L potassium phosphate, pH 7.0.
The reaction was started by the addition of 20 mg/L SAH hydrolase. The uric acid formed was measured photometrically at 292 nm.
assay method
The principle of this assay is based on the ability of the enzyme
SAH hydrolase to bind adenosine. The competitive ABPA for adenosine
uses SAH hydrolase in its reduced, enzymatically inactive form as the
binding protein. As shown previously, enzymatically active SAH
hydrolase from bovine kidney binds
[3H]adenosine with a high-affinity dissociation
constant of 6.8 nmol/L (16). The reduction of SAH hydrolase
leads to an enzymatically inactive enzyme that retains its ability to
bind adenosine with high affinity (18).
preparation of reduced (nadh)-sah hydrolase
The tightly bound NAD+ of the SAH hydrolase
was removed by incubation of the native enzyme (100 µg of protein)
with 100 µL of incubation buffer (150 mmol/L KCl, 80 mmol/L ATP, and
80 mmol/L MgCl2). After incubation for 120 min at
37 °C, the enzyme activity of the SAH hydrolase in this mixture was
measured as described above; the enzyme solution was then dialyzed
against 15 mmol/L Tris20 mmol/L HEPES, pH 7.0. Without
NAD+, the enzyme is completely inactive and loses
its binding affinity to adenosine. The reconstitution of the enzyme
with 1 mol/L NADH in 15 mmol/L Tris20 mmol/L HEPES, pH 7.0, produces
SAH hydrolase in its reduced (NADH-SAH hydrolase) form (19).
The enzyme activity of this reduced enzyme was tested to confirm the
inactivation of the SAH hydrolase. This reduced and enzymatically
inactive SAH hydrolase was stored in 100-µL aliquots at -20 °C.
These aliquots contained a protein concentration of 6001000 mg/L. In
this form and at the temperature indicated above, the reduced enzyme is
stable for at least 2 months.
quantification of adenosine by binding assay procedure
Displacement of [3H]adenosine was
performed in a final assay volume of 300 µL of 20 mmol/L Tris40
mmol/L HEPES, pH 7.4, with a concentration of SAH hydrolase of 3 mg/L
(1 µg/300 µL assay volume), a fixed concentration of
[3H]adenosine (3 nmol/L; 1 pmol/300 µL assay
volume), and various concentrations (1, 10, 30, 100, 300, and 1000
nmol/L) of unlabeled adenosine. The sample volume in the assay was 50
µL. The maximum sample volume used in the assay was 150 µL; the
minimum sample volume was 20 µL. After incubation for 14 h at
20 °C, the assay mixture was filtered through nitrocellulose
filters. The filters were washed with 4 mL of 20 mmol/L Tris40 mmol/L
HEPES, pH 7.4. The radioactivity adsorbed on the filters was determined
by liquid scintillation counting with Ultima
Gold® (Packard) as scintillation fluid in a
model 2550TR liquid scintillation analyzer (Packard).
To construct a calibration curve, we plotted the log values of the concentration of adenosine against the [3H]adenosine bound (as a percentage) and fitted the curve with a four-parameter logistic equation. The adenosine values between 10-9 and 10-6 mol/L from the resulting curve were then used to calculate the adenosine values of unknown samples on the basis of the counts per minute observed.
urine samples
Urine samples were collected in tubes containing 10 g/L
sulfosalicylic acid. Deproteinated undiluted samples may be stored
frozen at -80 °C without loss of adenosine for 3 month. Before
measurement, 500 µL of each sample was neutralized to a pH between
7.0 and 7.8 with 50 µL of 2.5 mol/L ammonium acetate, pH 8.7.
tissue samples
Rat kidneys shock-frozen to the temperature of liquid nitrogen
were powdered under liquid nitrogen and transferred into a preweighed
vial containing 6 mL of precooled 0.6 mol/L perchloric acid.
After centrifugation at 12 000g for 30 min at 4 °C, the
supernatant was collected and 500 µL of the supernatant was adjusted
to a pH between 7.0 and 7.8 by the addition of 50 µL of 2 mol/L
potassium carbonate, pH 9.5.
For comparison, all samples presented here were also analyzed for adenosine by HPLC (15).
calculation and statistics
The Student t-test for unpaired values was used to
determine the levels of significance. The data were analyzed using
linear regression analysis. The run test was used to determine the
goodness of fit of data to a given curve.
| Results |
|---|
|
|
|---|
35% of total binding of adenosine
(16). Adenosine binds to the reduced enzyme compared with
the active enzyme with an affinity
(Kd) of 32 ± 2 nmol/L vs
12.4 ± 0.8 nmol/L. The Bmax of
the NADH-SAH hydrolase was enhanced compared with the native enzyme by
a factor of 3, from 238 ± 3.2 pmol/mg to 848 ± 19 pmol/mg
protein. At 20 °C, the binding of 3 nmol/L
[3H]adenosine to NADH-SAH hydrolase reached
equilibrium after 8 h, whereas at 4 °C, the binding of 3 nmol/L
[3H]adenosine reached equilibrium after 22
h (Fig. 2
|
|
calibration curve
A representative calibration curve for the binding of adenosine is
shown in Fig. 3
. Because the human urine and rat kidney tissue samples
contained between 0.5 and 50 µmol/L adenosine, the samples were
diluted in 20 mmol/L Tris40 mmol/L HEPES, pH 7.4.
|
interference of adenosine analogs
The interference of adenosine analogs with the binding of
[3H]adenosine to NADH-SAH hydrolase was
analyzed by displacement experiments. The
IC50 values of these compounds are
summarized in Table 1
. Of the endogenous substances, 2'-deoxyadenosine was the only
compound that affected the assay when present in samples in a
concentration >100 nmol/L.
|
Because under normoxic conditions, the concentrations of the adenine
nucleotides in the rat kidney are 3 mmol/L ATP, 0.4 mmol/L ADP, and 0.2
mmol/L AMP, and because the intracellular concentrations of SAH and
cAMP are
1 nmol/L and 0.1 µmol/L, respectively, displacement of
the bound [3H]adenosine from the NADH-SAH
hydrolase under the assay conditions is unlikely. In addition,
N6-methyladenosine, which often is
used as internal standard for HPLC, shows a high affinity to NADH-SAH
hydrolase (IC50 = 730 nmol/L).
linearity and recovery
Table 2
shows the results for analysis of dilutions of a urine sample
with an adenosine concentration of 311 nmol/L, as determined by HPLC
and ABPA and then diluted in 20 mmol/L Tris40 mmol/L HEPES, pH 7.4.
Linear regression of the observed adenosine (y) vs the
calculated expected adenosine (x) gave the following
equation: y = 0.96x - 0.5
(r = 0.999; Sy|x = 0.963).
|
In the recovery test with rat and human urine and rat kidney tissue
samples (Table 3
), recovery of the added adenosine was 96.4107%. These
results demonstrate that there were no inhibitory or interfering
substances in the urine and kidney tissue.
|
precision and comparison of methods
The intra- and interassay imprecision of the method (as CVs) is
shown in Table 4
. The intraassay CV was determined by analyzing three samples of
rat urine containing 32.1, 47.4, and 97.0 nmol/L adenosine in 5
parallel determinations and two samples of rat kidney tissue containing
4.4 and 20.7 µmol/L in 12 parallel determinations. The interassay CV
was determined by measuring each urine and tissue sample on 5 different
days. The intra- and interassay CVs were 1.23.9% and 3.07.8%,
respectively.
|
Adenosine in 18 rat urine, 51 human urine, and 47 rat kidney tissue
samples was determined by ABPA and HPLC according to the method of
Delabar et al. (15). A comparison of the results obtained
with the method presented here and those of the HPLC method indicated
good agreement between the methods (Figs. 4
and
5). The correlation coefficient between the values obtained by
these two methods was 0.901 (Sy|x = 1.12) for
urine and 0.966 (Sy|x = 0.92) for tissue,
respectively.
|
| Discussion |
|---|
|
|
|---|
We used SAH hydrolase in its NADH form as a specific adenosine-binding protein. This enzymatically inactive protein retains its adenosine-binding capacity and has the advantage that no formation of SAH from adenosine and homocysteine, or hydrolysis of SAH can take place in the incubation mixture. In addition, the interference of endogenous adenine and adenine nucleotides in the binding of adenosine to NADH-SAH hydrolase is no longer present. Furthermore, NADH-SAH hydrolase has a threefold higher binding capacity for adenosine. Thus, only 1 µg of protein per assay volume (300 µL) is required to detect 10 nmol/L adenosine.
The binding assay with the NADH-SAH hydrolase and
[3H]adenosine of high specific activity is
sensitive enough to detect adenosine in samples with small volumes.
Therefore, it is possible to detect physiological changes in adenosine
concentrations. The precision of the method was satisfactory (CV
<3.97.8%), and it has sufficient analytical range. The adenosine
results obtained correlated well with HPLC results. The Bland-Altman
plot (Fig. 4B
) indicated that the method presented here has a tendency
to give lower adenosine values in urine samples in the higher
concentration range (y = -0151x + 0.656),
whereas the tissue samples showed an even distribution in the
Bland-Altman plot (Fig. 5B
; y = 0.058x
- 1.143). The ABPA procedure is extremely simple and does not require
any complicated purifications when the samples are deproteinized. The
method is an attractive alternative to HPLC analysis in both routine
and research laboratories. This analytical method may help clinical
researchers investigate the physiological roles and therapeutic
potencies of adenosine and several adenosine derivatives for treating
diseases in which adenosine metabolism is disturbed and, therefore,
organ function is impaired.
|
| References |
|---|
|
|
|---|
The following articles in journals at HighWire Press have cited this article:
![]() |
M. Chaki, R. Valderrama, A. M. Fernandez-Ocana, A. Carreras, J. Lopez-Jaramillo, F. Luque, J. M. Palma, J. R. Pedrajas, J. C. Begara-Morales, B. Sanchez-Calvo, et al. Protein targets of tyrosine nitration in sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.) hypocotyls J. Exp. Bot., November 1, 2009; 60(15): 4221 - 4234. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
V. Vallon, B. Muhlbauer, and H. Osswald Adenosine and kidney function. Physiol Rev, July 1, 2006; 86(3): 901 - 940. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| HOME | HELP | FEEDBACK | SUBSCRIPTIONS | ARCHIVE | SEARCH | TABLE OF CONTENTS |