The membrane-bound basic carboxypeptidase from hog intestinal mucosa

The carboxypeptidase activity occurring in hog intestinal mucosa is apparently due to two distinct enzymes which may be responsible for the release of basic COOH-terminal amino acids from short peptides. The plasma membrane-bound carboxypeptidase activity which occurs at neutral optimum pH levels was found to be enhanced by CoCl(2) and inhibited by guanidinoethylmercaptosuccinic acid, o-phenanthroline, ethylenediamine tetraacetic acid and cadmium acetate; whereas the soluble carboxypeptidase activity which occurs at an optimum pH level of 5.0 was not activated by CoCl(2) and only slightly inhibited by o-phenanthroline, ethylenediamine tetraacetic acid, NiCl(2) and CdCl(2). The latter activity was presumably due to lysosomal cathepsin B, which is known to be present in the soluble fraction of hog intestinal mucosa. Although the membrane-bound enzyme was evenly distributed along the small intestine, it was not anchored in the phospholipidic bilayer via a glycosyl-phosphatidylinositol moiety, as carboxypeptidase M from human placenta is. The enzyme was not solubilized by phosphatidylinositol-specific phospholipase C, but was solubilized to practically the same extent by several detergents. The purified trypsin-solubilized form is a glycoprotein with a molecular mass of 200 kDa, as determined by performing SDS–PAGE and gel filtration, which differs considerably from the molecular mass of human placental carboxypeptidase M (62 kDa). It was found to cleave lysyl bonds more rapidly than arginyl bonds, which is not so in the case of carboxypeptidase M, and immunoblotting analysis provided further evidence that hog intestinal and human placental membrane-bound carboxypeptidases do not bear much resemblance to each other. Since the latter enzyme has been called carboxypeptidase M, it is suggested that the former might be carboxypeptidase D, the recently described new member of the carboxypeptide B-type family.