Isolation of brush-border membranes from rat and rabbit colonocytes: is alkaline phosphatase a marker enzyme?

A method for the isolation of brush-border membranes of large intestinal epithelial cells was developed, which is based on the purification of intact brush-border caps by Percoll density-gradient centrifugation followed by separation of the vesiculated brush-border membranes on sucrose gradients. The procedure has two major advantages in comparison to known methods: its first step does not depend on the determination of marker enzymes and the method is applicable to rats as well as rabbits without major modifications. Due to the lack of an accepted marker for the colonic brush-border membrane the validity of the isolation procedure was tested by its application to the small intestine. Rat small intestinal brush-border membranes were enriched 21-fold when compared to the homogenate. The method was used to evaluate alkaline phosphatase as a marker enzyme for the colonic brush-border membrane. The results suggest that alkaline phosphatase is not exclusively localized in the brush-border membrane since this enzyme was also associated with membranes having different physical properties.