Characterization of the high and low affinity components of the renal Ca2+ – Mg2+ ATPase
The purpose of this study was to characterize the interrelationship between free calcium (Ca2+) and magnesium (Mg2+) in the Ca2+ ATPase enzyme cycle of kidney membranes. Experiments were performed with basolateral membranes from rat renal cortex and microdissected proximal and distal tubules from mice. Results were similar in the three types of preparations. We first investigated the effect of ATP concentration on Ca2+- and Mg2+-dependent ATP hydrolysis. With 0.2 μM Ca2+, the enzyme activity, as a function of ATP concentration, showed two saturable components: a high affinity component with a Km of 33 μM ATP and a low affinity component with a Km of 0.63 mM ATP. These components may represent either two distinct sites of ATP binding or two forms of the same site. For the sake of simplicity, it was assumed that the two components correspond to a high affinity and a low affinity substrate site. At the high affinity site (ATP = 50 μM), the Ca2+ dependence of ATP hydrolysis followed a single Michaelis–Menten kinetics with Km for Ca2+ of 0.08 μM. The addition of 1 mM Mg2+ resulted in a relatively constant increase in ATP hydrolysis at all Ca2+ concentrations, indicating that the effects of the two cations were additive. With high ATP concentration (ATP = 3 mM), Ca2+ also induced an ATP hydrolysis according to a saturable process, with a Km for Ca2+ of 0.2 μM. In contrast with what occurred with low concentrations of ATP, addition of millimolar Mg2+ completely curtailed the sensitivity of the enzyme to Ca2+. However, traces of Mg2+ (< 10−6 M), while decreasing the Vmax of the Ca2+ ATPase, increased the affinity of the enzyme for Ca2+. These results indicate that with high concentrations of ATP, Mg2+ not only modifies the enzyme conformation but also displaces Ca2+. The effects of calmodulin, vanadate, and lanthanum were also examined using low and high concentrations of ATP. With 50 μM ATP, neither 0.5 μM calmodulin nor 100 μM lanthanum had any influence on the Ca2+-dependent ATP hydrolysis; in contrast, 100 μM vanadate significantly diminished the enzyme activity. With 3 mM ATP, 0.5 μM calmodulin increased the affinity of the enzyme for Ca2+, whereas 100 μM vanadate decreased it. These results suggest that the effect of calmodulin occurs only when the two sites are occupied, whereas vanadate interferes in presence of both low and high ATP concentrations. Based on the analogy with the sequential elementary steps described for other membrane Ca2+ ATPases and for Na+–K+ ATPase, and on the similarities between these characteristics of ATP hydrolysis and those of the enzyme phosphorylation on one hand and ATP-dependent Ca2+ transport on the other hand, we propose that the phosphoenzyme formation occurs at the high affinity site and that Ca2+ transport is directly related to ATP binding at the low affinity site, which might be considered as a regulatory site.Key words: kidney Ca2+ ATPase, ATP magnesium and calcium on Ca2+ ATPase, ATP-dependent calcium transport in kidney.