Ns and Ni, the stimulatory and inhibitory regulatory components of adenylyl cyclases. Purification of the human erythrocyte proteins without the use of activating regulatory ligands.

Methods were developed to adequately extract, separate and, without the use of NaF as stabilizing agent, purify to better than 90% purity human erythrocyte Ns and Ni, the stimulatory and inhibitory guanine nucleotide- and Mg-binding regulatory components of adenylyl cyclases, as well as a protein containing Mr = 35,000 subunits. On the basis of a functional assay for Ns, it was purified about 5,000-fold from starting washed erythrocyte membranes with a yield of about 10%. A typical purification yields from 60 units of outdated human blood, between 500 and 1,000 micrograms of pure Ns, and a similar amount of Ni. Pure Ns and Ni contain each at least one alpha and one beta subunit (Northup, J.K., Sternweis, P.C., Smigel, M.D., Schleifer, L.S., Ross, E.M., and Gilman, A.G. (1980) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 74, 6516-6520; Codina, J., Hildebrandt, J.D., Iyengar, R., Birnbaumer, L., Sekura, R.D., and Manclark, C.R. (1983) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 77, 4276-4280). Polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis in the presence of sodium dodecyl sulfate at varying acrylamide concentrations yielded Mr values of 42,000 and 40,000 for the alpha subunits of Ns and Ni, and of 35,000 for the beta subunits of Ns and Ni. Two-dimensional thin layer analysis of tryptic peptides obtained from digesting 125I-labeled subunits of Ns and Ni confirmed the finding of Manning, D., and Gilman, A.G. (1983) J. Biol. Chem. 258, 7059-7063) that while their alpha subunits are clearly different, their beta subunits are the same. Hydrodynamic analysis of the molecular weights of the nondenatured proteins showed behavior consistent with Mr = 95,500 for Ns, the same for Ni, and Mr = 40,000 for the protein containing the Mr = 35,000 beta subunit. Sedimentation coefficients and Stokes radii of the purified Ns were indistinguishable from those of Ns activity present in initial cholate extracts from human erythrocyte membranes. Further, the overall kinetics with which Ns activity in cholate extracts and Ns activity in the purified protein reconstituted the Ns-deficient adenylyl cyclase system of cyc- S49 cells was also indistinguishable. We conclude that we have purified the native unactivated form of Ns, and by serendipity the Ni, as well as a protein containing the 35 kDa beta subunit of Ns and Ni.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)