Biophysical Journal 66: 1653-1664 (1994)
© 1994 the Biophysical Society

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Changes in the profile structure of the sarcoplasmic reticulum membrane induced by phosphorylation of the Ca2+ ATPase enzyme in the presence of terbium: a time-resolved x-ray diffraction study.

Department of Chemistry, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia 19104.

ABSTRACT

The design of the time-resolved x-ray diffraction experiments reported in this and an accompanying paper was based on direct measurements of enzyme phosphorylation using [gamma-32P]ATP that were employed to determine the extent to which the lanthanides La3+ and Tb3+ activate phosphorylation of the Ca2+ATPase and their effect on the kinetics of phosphoenzyme formation and decay. We found that, under the conditions of our experiments, the two lanthanides are capable of activating phosphorylation of the ATPase, resulting in substantial levels of phosphoenzyme formation and they slow the formation and dramatically extend the lifetime of the phosphorylated enzyme conformation, as compared with calcium activation. The results from the time-resolved, nonresonance x-ray diffraction work reported in this paper are consistent with the enzyme phosphorylation experiments; they indicate that the changes in the profile structure of the SR membrane induced by terbium-activated phosphorylation of the ATPase enzyme are persistent over the much longer lifetime of the phosphorylated enzyme and are qualitatively similar to the changes induced by calcium-activated phosphorylation, but smaller in magnitude. These results made possible the time-resolved, resonance x-ray diffraction studies reported in an accompanying paper utilizing the resonance x-ray scattering from terbium, replacing calcium, to determine not only the location of high-affinity metal-binding sites in the SR membrane profile, but also the redistribution of metal density among those sites upon phosphorylation of the Ca2+ATPase protein, as facilitated by the greatly extended lifetime of the phosphoenzyme.