title: A spectrum of partially carboxylated prothrombins in the plasmas of coumarin-treated patients.
abstract: Prothrombin has been purified from the plasmas of normal human donors and from patients ingesting coumarins. Equimolar amounts of normal prothrombin or coumadin-induced prothrombin were incubated with phospholipid micelles in the presence of Ca2+. Subsequent gel filtration of the incubation mixtures demonstrated that all of the normal prothrombin was bound to the phospholipid; only half of the coumadin-induced prothrombin was bound. Normal prothrombin contains approximately 10 mol of gamma-carboxyglutamic acid per mol of prothrombin. The coumadin-induced prothrombin which was bound to phospholipid contains approximately 6.5 mol of gamma-carboxyglutamic acid per mol of prothrombin while that which failed to bind to phospholipid has only 2.8 mol of gamma-carboxyglutamic acid per mol of zymogen. Thus, partially carboxylated prothrombins exist in the plasmas of coumarin-treated patients. Furthermore, there is a striking electrophoretic heterogeneity in the prothrombin preparations from the plasmas of the coumadin-treated patients. This most likely results from a wide spectrum of abnormal prothrombins with varying quantities of gamma-carboxyglutamic acid per mol of zymogen.
mesh_terms: D002118:Calcium / Q000097:blood; D003374:Coumarins / Q000494:pharmacology*; D004591:Electrophoresis, Polyacrylamide Gel; D005971:Glutamates / Q000097:blood; D006801:Humans; D010743:Phospholipids / Q000378:metabolism*; D011516:Prothrombin / Q000378:metabolism*; D013329:Structure-Activity Relationship
chemical_list: D003374:Coumarins; D005971:Glutamates; D010743:Phospholipids; D011516:Prothrombin; D002118:Calcium