Horse-liver glutathione reductase: purification and characterization.

1. Purification of horse-liver glutathione reductase was obtained by affinity chromatography on N6-(6-aminohexyl)-adenosine-1'5'-bisphosphate Sepharose (N6-2'5'-ADP-Sepharose) and Reactive Red-120-Agarose, and chromatography on DEAE-Sephadex and Sephacryl S-300. 2. The final preparation had 248 U/mg specific activity after 11,174-fold purification with 47% final recovery, and was homogeneous by SDS-electrophoresis. It showed charge heterogeneity in non-denaturing electrophoresis and chromatofocusing, with several peaks of pI between 5.7 and 6.7. 3. The enzyme was homodimeric (107,000 native MW), with S20w = 6.31 S, and 41.22 A of hydrodynamic radius. It showed absorption peaks at 270, 370 and 462 nm, a characteristic of flavoproteins. 4. When NADPH was substituted by deamino-NADPH or NADH the enzyme showed 69 and 8.5% activity, respectively, while with glutathione-CoA mixed disulfide the enzyme had 23% of the activity shown with GSSG. Apparent Km values of 8.8, 680, 59, and 560 microM were measured for NADPH, NADH, GSSG and ferricyanide, respectively.