Isolation of a polydisperse high-molecular-weight glycogen from rat liver

✍ Scribed by Doris M. Haverstick; Alvin H. Gold

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1981
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 746 KB
• Volume: 111
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0003-2697
• DOI: 10.1016/0003-2697(81)90241-4

✦ Synopsis

A new method is described for the isolation of glycogen from rat liver using centrifugation, gentle heating, and gel chromatography. The prepared polysaccharide was judged by both sucrose density gradient centrifugation and the absorbance spectrum of an I,-glycogen complex to be highly branched, polydisperse, and of an unusually high molecular weight upon comparison to other glycogens. Using adult fasted rats, this glycogen was shown to be better than high-molecular-weight cold water-ethanol extracted glycogen for the binding of glycogen metabolizing enzymes. Further, the addition of 0.5% (w/v) of the glycogen to a crude liver extract from newborn rats facilitated the isolation of an almost 700-fold purified glycogen synthase with 40% recovery. It is suggested that this glycogen could also be used to study the role of enzyme binding in the regulation of carbohydrate metabolism.