Properties of chicken skeletal muscle pyruvate kinase and a proposal for its evolutionary relationship to the other avian and mammalian isozymes.

Pyruvate kinase (EC 2.7.1.40) was isolated and purified from chicken and turkey breast muscle with a purification procedure very similar to that used for the bovine skeletal muscle isozyme (Cardenas, J., Dyson, R., and strandholm, J. (1973), J. Biol. Chem. 248,6931). A study of the chemical and physical properties of the chicken enzyme revealed that it is a tetramer of four apparently identical subunits, closely resembling in this and most other respects the mamalian type 7 isozyme. The properties of these two enzymes are similar enough to permit subunits of chicken type M pyruvate kinase to combine with subunits of mammalian type L (one of the three mammalian isozymes) to form interspecies tetrameric hybrid isozymes in relative quantities that do not differ makedly from those formed when both the M and L isozymes are of mammalian origin. The similarity between the mammalian and avian type M pyruvates kinases suggests a close evolutionary relationship. Further comparisons among the three mammalian and two avian isozymes of pyruvate kinase are consistent with a common evolutionary origin, perhaps from an ancestral form of the type K isozyme, which is the only pyruvate kinase identified in mammalian and avian embryos.