Biochemical studies on rat liver Golgi apparatus. II. Further characterization of isolated Golgi fraction

Abstract

Although the preparation of rat liver Golgi apparatus isolated by our method contains appreciable activities of NADH- and NADPH-cytochrome c reductases and glucose-6-phosphatase, these enzymes as well as thiamine pyrophosphatase of the extensively fragmented Golgi fraction are partitioned in aqueous polymer two-phase systems quite differently from those associated with microsomes. Similarly, the partition patterns of acid phosphatase and 5'-nucleotidase of the Golgi fragments differ from those of homogenized lysosomes and plasma membrane, respectively. It is concluded that most, if not all, of these marker enzymes in the Golgi fraction cannot be ascribed to contamination by the non-Golgi organelles. In sucrose density gradient centrifugation the NADH- and NADPH-cytochrome c reductase activities of the Golgi fraction behave identically with galactosyltransferase but differently from the reductase activities of microsomes, again indicating that the reductases are inherently associated with the Golgi apparatus. NADPH-cytochrome c reductase of the Golgi preparation is immunologically identical with that of microsomes. The marker enzymes mentioned above and galactosyltransferase behave differently from one another when the Golgi fragments are subjected to partitioning in aqueous polymer two-phase systems, suggesting that these enzymes are not uniformly distributed in the Golgi apparatus structure.