Phosphorylation and Dephosphorylation to Modulation of Enzyme Activity by Feeding Cholesterol- or Cholestyramine-supplemented Diets

The activity of 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-coenzyme A reductase (hydroxymethylglutaryl-CoA reductase) was considerably inhibited during incubation with ATP + Mg2+. The inactivated enzyme was reactivated on further incubation with partially purified cytosolic phosphoprotein phosphatase. The inactivation was associated with a decrease in the apparent Km of the reductase for hydroxymethylglutaryl-CoA, and this was reversed on reactivation. The slight increase in activity observed during incubation of microsomal fraction without ATP was not associated with a change in apparent Km and, unlike the effect of the phosphatase, was not inhibited by NaF. Liver microsomal fraction from rats given cholesterol exhibited a low activity of hydroxymethylglutaryl-CoA reductase with a low apparent Km for hydroxymethylglutaryl-CoA. Microsomal fraction from rats fed cholestyramine exhibited a high activity with a high Km. To discover whether these changes had resulted from phosphorylation and dephosphorylation of the reductase, microsomal fraction from rats fed the supplemented diets and the standard diet were inactivated with ATP and reactivated with phosphoprotein phosphatase. Inactivation reduced the maximal activity of the reductase in each microsomal preparation and also reduced the apparent Km for hydroxymethylglutaryl-CoA. There was no difference between the preparations in the degree of inactivation produced by ATP. Treatment with phosphatase restored both the maximal activity and the apparent Km of each preparation, but never significantly increased the activity above that observed with untreated microsomal fraction. It is concluded that hydroxymethylglutaryl-CoA reductase in microsomal fraction prepared by standard procedures is almost entirely in the dephosphorylated form, and that the difference in kinetic properties in untreated microsomal fraction from rats fed the three diets cannot be explained by differences in the degree of phosphorylation of the enzyme.