Proenzyme of Manduca sexta phenol oxidase: purification, activation, substrate specificity of the active enzyme, and molecular cloning.

Phenol oxidase (PO) was isolated as a proenzyme (pro-phenol oxidase, pro-PO) from the hemolymph of Manduca sexta larvae and purified to homogeneity. Pro-PO exhibits a M(r) of 130,000 on gel filtration and two bands with an apparent M(r) of approximately 100,000 on SDS/PAGE, as well as size-exclusion HPLC. Activation of pro-PO was achieved either by specific proteolysis by a cuticular protease or by the detergent cetylpyridinium chloride at a concentration below the critical micellar concentration. A cDNA clone for M. sexta pro-PO was obtained from a larval hemocyte cDNA library. The clone encodes a polypeptide of approximately 80,000 Da that contains two copper-binding sites and shows high sequence similarity to POs, hemocyanins, and storage proteins of arthropods. The M. Sexta pro-PO, together with other arthropod pro-POs, contains a short stretch of amino acids with sequence similarity to the thiol ester region of alpha-macroglobulins and complement proteins C3 and C4.