Equilibrium binding of insulin to rat white fat cells at 15 degrees C.

Equilibrium binding of insulin to isolated rat epididymal fat cells was investigated. A temperature of 15 degrees C was chosen for the study to minimize lysosomal degradation of insulin. Indeed, medium insulin lost only 1% of its precipitability in trichloroacetic acid during the 4-h incubation required to approach equilibrium. Binding was measured by a method that did not perturb the equilibrium of the system. A new formalism for analyzing binding data in general was introduced. A correction for trapping of insulin in the interstitial space of cell pellets was both necessary and sufficient to derive specific binding data from raw observations. Thus, so-called "nonspecific binding" was unmasked as a misnomer, and the expression "correction for trapping" was proposed as a substitute. Equations for one and two independent classes of binding sites were fit to the data by the method of maximum likelihood, and the best fit was selected based on Akaike's information criterion, as adapted for a constant fractional error. More than 99.7% of the binding sites were found to be describable by a simple binding isotherm with Kd,app = 8.8 multiplied by over divided by 1.3 nM. Less than 0.3% sites had a higher affinity (Kd approximately equal to 8 multiplied by over divided by 3 pM). There were 99,000 x/divided by 1.6 binding sites/cell. These equilibrium parameters are in agreement with values derived from a kinetic analysis, presented in the subsequent paper (Lipkin, E. W., Teller, D. C., and de Haën, C. (1986) J. Biol. Chem. 260, 1702-1711).