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3-hydroxy-3-methyl glutaryl-CoA reductase, also known as HMGR, plays a crucial role in regulating cholesterol biosynthesis and represents the main pharmacological target of statins. In mammals, this enzyme localizes to the endoplasmic reticulum membrane. HMGR includes different regions, an integral N-terminal domain connected by a linker-region to a cytosolic C-terminal domain, the latter being responsible for enzymatic activity. The aim of this work was to design a simple strategy for cloning, expression, and purification of the catalytic C-terminal domain of the human HMGR (cf-HMGR), in order to spectrophotometrically test its enzymatic activity. The recombinant cf-HMGR protein was heterologously expressed in Escherichia coli, purified by Ni+-agarose affinity chromatography and reconstituted in its active form. MALDI mass spectrometry was adopted to monitor purification procedure as a technique orthogonal to the classical Western blot analysis. Protein identity was validated by MS and MS/MS analysis, confirming about 82% of the recombinant sequence. The specific activity of the purified and dialyzed cf-HMGR preparation was enriched about 85-fold with respect to the supernatant obtained from cell lysate. The effective, cheap, and easy method here described could be useful for screening statin-like molecules, so simplifying the search for new drugs with hypocholesterolemic effects.

Several ATP-depending reactions take place in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). Although in Saccharomyces cerevisiae ER the existence of a Sac1p-dependent ATP transport system was already known, its direct involvement in ATP transport was excluded. Here we report an extensive biochemical characterization of a partially purified adenine nucleotide transport system (ANTS) not dependent on Sac1p. Highly purified ER membranes from the wild-type and Δsac1 yeast strains reconstituted into liposomes transported ATP with the same efficiency. A chromatography on hydroxyapatite was used to partially purify ANTS from Δsac1 ER extract. The two ANTS-enriched transport activity eluted fractions showed essentially the presence of four bands, one having an apparent MW of 56 kDa, similar to that observed for ANTS identified in rat liver ER. The two fractions reconstituted into liposomes efficiently transported, by a strict counter-exchange mechanism, ATP and ADP. ATP transport was saturable with a Km of 0.28 mM. The ATP/ADP exchange mechanism and the kinetic constants suggest that the main physiological role of ANTS is to catalyse the transport of ATP into ER, where it is used in several energy-requiring reactions and to export back to the cytosol the ADP produced.

The dicarboxylate carrier is an important member of the mitochondrial carrier family, which catalyzes an electroneutral exchange across the inner mitochondrial membrane of dicarboxylates for inorganic phosphate and certain sulfur-containing compounds. Screening of the Drosophila melanogaster genome revealed the presence of a mitochondrial carrier subfamily constituted by four potential homologs of mammalian and yeast mitochondrial dicarboxylate carriers designated as DmDic1p, DmDic2p, DmDic3p, and DmDic4p. In this paper, we report that DmDIC1 is broadly expressed at comparable levels in all development stages investigated whereas DmDIC3 and DmDIC4 are expressed only in the pupal stage, no transcripts are detectable for DmDIC2. All expressed proteins are localized in mitochondria. The transport activity of DmDic1-3-4 proteins has been investigated by reconstitution of recombinant purified protein into liposomes. DmDic1p is a typical dicarboxylate carrier showing similar substrate specificity and inhibitor sensitivity as mammalian and yeast mitochondrial dicarboxylate carriers. DmDic3p seems to be an atypical dicarboxylate carrier being able to transport only inorganic phosphate and certain sulfur-containing compounds. No transport activity was observed for DmDic4p. The biochemical results have been supported at molecular level by computing the protein structures and by structural alignments. All together these results indicate that D. melanogaster dicarboxylate carriers form a protein subfamily but the modifications in the amino acids sequences are indicative of specialized functions.