CLEAVAGE PATHWAY,AND SPECIFICITY OF LEUCOCYTE ELASTASE AS COMPARED TO PLASMIN DURING FIBRINOGEN DEGRADATION

Plasmin and leucocyte elastase are regarded as the two medically most important fibrin(ogen)-degrading proteolytic enzymes. There is, however, a considerable difference in information available about the cleavage specificities and fragmentation pathways of these two enzymes. Degradation by plasmin has been studied already for a long time in great detail so that now the time course of the degradation, the cleavage sites and the functional properties of many fragments are well known. In contrast, relatively little is known about the degradation by leucocyte elastase, except that the overall cleavage pattern resembles that obtained with plasminIn this investigation the leucocyte elastase-mediated degradation of fibrinogen has been examined by means of proteinchemi-cal methods. Human fibrinogen was incubated with human enzyme material for various periods of time and at some different enzyme concentrations. The split products formed at the various stages were isolated in pure form by gel filtration followed by reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography. The fragments were identified by N-terminal amino acid sequence and amino acid composition. The course of the degradation was also monitored by sodium dodecylsulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. All cleavage patterns were compared with the corresponding patterns from plasmic degradation. It could be confirmed that X-, D- and E-like fragments are formed also with elastase. However, several early elastolytic Aα-chain fragments are characteristically different from plasmic fragments. The previously identified N-terminal cleavage site in the Aα-chain, i.e. after position 21, was found to be the most important site in this region of fibrinogen. The very early degradation of the Aα-chain N-terminus by elastase is in strong contrast to the stability against plasmin. Several cleavage sites in N-terminal region of the Bβ-chain were observed, though the low amino acid specificity of elastase partly hampered the identification. The γ-chain N-terminus was found to be as highly stable towards elastase as towards plasmin. The results are expected to contribute to the understanding of the role of leucocyte elastase in pathophysiologic fibrino(geno)lysis