Protein phosphorylation of human lysosomal arylsulfatase B from normal and cancer tissues.

Previous studies from this laboratory have demonstrated that arylsulfatase B (ASB) is phosphorylated by a protein kinase, which is the first finding of phosphorylation in lysosomal hydrolases. The present study was undertaken to characterize the sites of phosphorylation in ASB from transplanted human lung cancer and from normal human tissues, and to identify type of tumor protein kinase responsible for the phosphorylation of ASB. When ASB purified from liver and placenta was phosphorylated in vitro by a cAMP-dependent protein kinase, it gave a single tryptic phosphopeptide (X) and phosphothreonine. On the other hand, the tumor ASB which had been phosphorylated in vivo demonstrated two phosphopeptides X and Y. Since the tumor ASB had been shown to be phosphorylated both at threonine and serine residues, phosphorylation at threonine residue of peptide X, which is phosphorylated by a cAMP-dependent protein kinase, will be cancer-associated. Through photoaffinity labeling with a labeled cAMP analogue to detect regulatory subunits of cAMP-dependent protein kinase subtypes, it was found that the cAMP-dependent protein kinase in the transplanted lung tumor was largely type II which can be ascribed to the appearance of highly phosphorylated ASB in the tumor.