ABSTRACT: Previous work has shown that guanosine 5'-[gamma-thio]triphosphate (GTP[S]) and GTP stimulate phospholipase D (PLD) in rabbit platelet membranes and that these effects are greatly enhanced by pretreatment of platelets with phorbol esters that activate protein kinase C [Van der Meulen and Haslam (1990), Biochem. J. 271, 693-700]. In the present study, the effects of Mg2+, various nucleoside triphosphates and phosphocreatine (PCr) were investigated. Platelet membranes containing phospholipids labelled with [3H]glycerol were assayed for PLD in the presence of an optimal Mg2+ concentration (10 mM) by measuring [3H]phosphatidylethanol formation in incubations that included 300 mM ethanol. In membranes from phorbolester-treated platelets, the same maximal increases in PLD activity (5-fold) were seen with 1 microM GTP[S]), and 100 microM GTP. Addition of adenosine 5'-[gamma-thio]triphosphate (ATP[S]), ITP, XTP, UTP and CTP had similar stimulatory effects, but only at > or = 1 mM. In contrast, ATP had a biphasic action, causing a maximal (2-fold) stimulation at 10 microM and smaller effects at higher concentrations; the inhibitory component of the action of ATP was blocked by 2 microM staurosporine. Guanosine 5'-[beta-thio]diphosphate decreased the stimulatory effects of ATP and ATP[S]. UDP, which can inhibit nucleoside diphosphate kinase (NDPK), decreased the activation of PLD by ATP[S], ATP, XTP, CTP and to a lesser extent ITP, but had no effect on the actions of GTP[S] and GTP. Rabbit platelet membranes contained NDPK and addition of [gamma-32P]ATP led to the formation of [32P]GTP in amounts sufficient to explain most or all of the activation of PLD; UDP prevented GTP formation. PCr (0.04-1 mM) also stimulated membrane PLD activity, an effect that was dependent on endogenous membrane-bound creatine kinase (CK). UDP and guanosine 5'-[beta-thio]diphosphate each inhibited this effect of PCr. The results show that in rabbit platelet membranes, CK, NDPK and the GTP-binding protein that activates PLD can be functionally coupled. However, assay of membrane preparations at increasing dilutions showed that stimulation of PLD by the compounds studied, with the partial exception of ATP[S], involved diffusible rather than protein-bound intermediates.
