Mouse alcohol dehydrogenase isozymes: products of closely localized duplicate genes exhibiting divergent kinetic properties.

Electrophoretic variants for the stomach isozyme (ADH-C2) and liver isozyme (ADH-A2) of alcohol dehydrogenase in strains of Mus musculus have been used in genetic analyses to demonstrate close linkage between the structural genes (Ahd-3 and Adh-1, respectively) encoding these enzymes. No recombinants were observed between these loci among 126 backcross animals, which places them less than 0.8 centimorgans apart. Previous studies have positioned Adh-3, and a temporal locus (ADh-3t), on chromosome 3 (Holmes, "79; Holmes et al., "80). Kinetic analyses on partially purified preparations of these isozymes have demonstrated widely divergent catalytic properties and inhibitor specificities. The liver isozyme exhibited Michaelis constants that were nearly 3 orders of magnitude lower than the stomach isozyme for various alcohol and aldehyde substrates. Moreover, aminopropyl pyrazole strongly inhibited ADH-A2 (Ki=1.2M), whereas ADH-C2 was insensitive to inhibition under the conditions used. It is proposed that Adh-1 and Adh-3 are products of a recent gene duplication event during mammalian evolution and that considerable divergence in the active sites of these enzymes and the "temporal" genes controlling loci expression in differentiated tissues has subsequently occurred.