Schizophrenic behavior and urinary tryptophan metabolites associated with cysteine given with and without a monoamine oxidase inhibitor (tranylcypromine)

Two forms of an alpha-2-globulin (a lipoprotein) have been isolated from individual human plasmas.They are the same in amino acid and lipid compositions, but they differ in trans-membrane transport activities and in their in uiuo activities. The form from control subjects, which is nonhelical in conformation, seems to be devoid of biological activities. The other form is from patients with schizophrenia, has variable J,, and promotes trans-membrane transport of tryptophan. From biophysical measurements on pooled samples, the apparent = 0.46 and 0.44 for the patients' sample and the control sample, respectively. The apparent D,,., = 1.25 and 1.22, respectively, for the two forms. With 6 = 0.968, the molecular weights from the Svedberg equation were found to be 263,500 f 2,500. With a 20% protein content, the protein moiety is close to 53,000 Daltons, which is much less than that for many other lipoproteins. With [ q ] = 0.0264, the helical conformation is globular in shape and nearly spherical. For the nonhelical conformation, [q] = 0.0369, which signifies an increased molecular asymmetry. In amino acid composition this alpha-2-globulin is different from the lipoprotein (LDL) and from the HDL-1, but it is quite similar to that of the HDL,.

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