The effect of nutritional state and allopurinol on nucleotide formation in enterocytes from the guinea pig small intestine

Abstract

The uptake of purine nucleosides (guanosine and hypoxanthine) and bases (guanine, hypoxanthine and adenine) and their incorporation into nucleotides were studied in enterocytes isolated from fed and 3-day fasted guinea pig jejunum. Both total uptake and synthesis of nucleotides were greater for these purines in the fasted, as compared to the fed state for the first 5 min, when the initial substrate concentration in the medium was 10 microM. Increased uptake did not result from a change in the relative distribution of synthesized nucleotides between the fed and fasted states. Reduced catabolism was observed in the medium by enterocytes from fasted as compared to fed animals after 1 min of incubation with both inosine and guanosine. Preincubation of enterocytes with allopurinol (a xanthine oxidase inhibitor) decreased total uptake but increased the formation of IMP from hypoxanthine. Xanthine oxidase activity measured in mucosa from fasted guinea pigs was lower than that from fed animals (6.29 vs. 9.30 nmol/min per mg protein, respectively). However, activities of the salvage enzymes adenine phosphoribosyltransferase and hypoxanthine-guanine phosphoribosyltransferase were not significantly different between the fed and fasted states. These data show that allopurinol treatment, and mucosal atrophy resulting from fasting, decrease xanthine oxidase activity and increase nucleotide synthesis from exogenous substrates in enterocytes from the guinea-pig small intestine, suggesting a regulatory function of mucosal xanthine oxidase in purine salvage by the small intestine.