Automethylation of protein (D-aspartyl/L-isoaspartyl) carboxyl methyltransferase, a response to enzyme aging.

A question that is central to understanding the mechanisms of aging and cellular deterioration is whether enzymes involved in recognition and metabolism of spontaneously damaged proteins are themselves damaged, either becoming substrates for their own activity; or being unable to act upon themselves, initiating cascades of cellular damage. We show here by in vitro experiments that protein (D-aspartyl/L-isoaspartyl) carboxyl methyltransferase (PCM) from bovine erythrocytes does methylate age-dependent amino acid damage in its own sequence. The subpopulation that is methylated, termed the alpha PCM fraction, appears to be formed through age-dependent deamidation of an asparaginly site to either an L-isoaspartyl or D-aspartyl site because (a) the stoichiometry of automethylation of purified PCM is less than 1%, a value typical of the substoichiometric methylation of many other aged protein substrates, (b) alpha PCM is slightly more acidic than the bulk of PCM, and (c) the methyl esterified site in alpha PCM has the characteristic base-lability of this type of methyl ester. Also, the methyl group is not incorporated into the enzyme as an active site intermediate because the incorporated methyl group is not chased onto substrate protein. The effect of enzyme dilution on the rate of the automethylation reaction is consistent with methylation occurring between protein molecules, showing that the pool of PCM is autocatalytic even though individual molecules may not be. The automethylation and possible self-repair of the PCM pool has implications for maintaining the in vivo efficiency of methylation-dependent protein repair.