Developmental forms of human skeletal-muscle AMP deaminase. The kinetic and regulatory properties of the enzyme.

AMP deaminase isoforms from human skeletal muscle can be separated chromatographically [Kaletha, Spychała & Nowak (1987) Experientia 43, 440-443]. In adult tissue nearly all the AMP deaminase activity was eluted from phosphocellulose with 0.75 M-KCl ('adult' isoform), and the remaining activity could be eluted with 2.0 M-KCl. Conversely, most of the AMP deaminase activity from 11-week-old fetal tissue was eluted from phosphocellulose with 2.0 M-KCl ('fetal' isoform). In the present paper the kinetic and regulatory properties of AMP deaminase extracted from 11- and 16-week-old fetal skeletal muscle are reported. The two isoforms from 11-week-old human fetus differed distinctly in these properties. The 'fetal' isoform had about 5-fold higher half-saturation constant (S0.5) value than the 'adult' form. It was also more sensitive to the influence of some important regulatory ligands (ADP, ATP and Pi), and exhibited a different pH/activity profile. The 'adult' isoform of AMP deaminase from fetal muscle and the enzyme from mature muscle possessed similar kinetic and regulatory properties. This isoform seems not to be subject to any major modifications during further ontogenesis. This is not true, however, for the 'fetal' isoform. In the muscle of 16-week-old human fetus, the 'fetal' isoform showed a peculiar, biphasic, type of substrate-saturation kinetics. This phenomenon may reflect appearance of the next, developmentally programmed, isoform of human skeletal-muscle AMP deaminase.