Turnover of the plasma membrane proteins of hepatoma tissue culture cells

Abstract

The turnover of the plasma membrane proteins of hepatoma tissue culture cells was examined by three different methods--loss of polypeptides labeled in situ by lactoperoxidase-catalyzed iodination, loss of membrane polypeptides labeled with amino acid precursors, and loss from the membrane of fucose-labeled polypeptides. In both logarithmically growing and density-inhibited cells the proteins of the membrane are degraded with a half-life of about 100 hours. This is longer than the half-life of total cell protein, 50 to 60 hours, and longer than the doubling time of the cells, about 30 hours. Similar values for the rate of degradation of the membrane proteins were obtained by each of the three techniques. The same fucose-labeled polypeptides are present in the microsomal and the plasma membrane fractions of hepatoma tissue culture cells as analyzed by electrophoresis in dodecyl sulfate-acrylamide gels. But the fucose-labeled polypeptides were lost from the microsomal fraction at a faster rate than from the plasma membrane. Autoradiographic and double labeling techniques using 125I and 131I, or [3H]leucine and [14C]leucine were used to measure the relative rates of degradation of the proteins in the plasma membrane. All of the leucine-labeled polypeptides and the iodinated polypeptides had similar rates of degradation. These results support a model for the biogenesis of the plasma membrane in which the proteins are incorporated and removed in large structural units.