Iii. Correlation of the Regulatory Kinetic and Molecular Properties of the Rabbit Muscle Enzyme*

It is shown that the degree of regulatory kinetic behavior of rabbit muscle phosphofructokinase increases at a given pH and lower temperatures, as well as at a given temperature and lower pH values. It is also shown that the regulatory kinetic behavior which appears at lower pH values is inherent in the tetrameric (active) form of the enzyme. We conclude that a portion of the mechanism proposed previously (Bock, P. E., and Frieden, C. (1976) J. Biol. Chem. 251, 5630-5636) to describe the pH and temperature-dependent inactivation or reactivation may also be used to explain the pH and temperature-dependent regulatory kinetic behavior. According to this proposal, two rapidly equilibrating forms of the enzyme, which differ in the degree of protonation of specific residues, differ in their ability to bind substrates. While the protonated form of the enzyme subsequently becomes inactive by isomerization and dissociation, this process is too slow to affect the kinetic results, making direct comparisons between the association-dissociation behavior and regulatory kinetic behavior invalid. The time dependence of the processes of inactivation or reactivation in the presence or absence of ligands and of the appearance of regulatory kinetic behavior is discussed in relation to their possible role in metabolic regulation.