Processing of the phosphorylated recognition marker in lysosomal enzymes. Characterization and partial purification of a microsomal alpha-N-acetylglucosaminyl phosphodiesterase.

N-Acetylglucosamine(1)phospho(6)mannose groups recently identified in lysosomal enzymes were proposed to be precursors of the recognition markers terminating with mannose 6-phosphate (Tabas, I., and Kornfeld, S. (1980) J. Biol. Chem. 225, 6633-6639; Hasilik, A., Klein, U., Waheed, A., Strecker, G., and von Figura, K. (1980) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 77, 7074-7078). To study the presumptive enzyme removing N-acetylglucosamine from the diester, an assay was developed using a radioactive oligosaccharide containing diester groups of the above structure. An alpha-N-acetylglucosaminyl phosphodiesterase cleaving this substrate in vitro was found in human placenta and in rat liver. The enzyme was solubilized from the microsomal fraction of human placenta and more than 800-fold purified with 75% yield. It is distinct from the lysosomal alpha-N-acetylglucosaminidase by the criteria of immunological cross-reactivity, substrate specificity, and heat stability. The partially purified enzyme cleaves alpha-N-acetylglucosamine phosphodiester bonds in oligosaccharides from lysosomal enzymes, in lysosomal enzymes, and in UDP-N-acetylglucosamine. We propose that the microsomal alpha-N-acetylglucosaminyl phosphodiesterase is involved in the processing of the phosphorylated recognition marker in lysosomal enzymes.