Substrate Selectivity of Type A and Type B Monoamine Oxidase in Rat Brain

: Use of the irreversible inhibitors clorgyline and deprenyl showed that rat brain mitochondria contain type A and type B monoamine oxidase (MAO). Tyramine is a substrate for both types of MAO, whereas serotonin is a preferential substrate for type A MAO. In contrast to MAO in other tissues, type A MAO in brain tissue oxidizes β‐phenylethylamine (PEA) at high concentrations (0.5 and 1.0 mM). The proportions of type A and type B MAO activities in the mitochondria estimated from the double‐sigmoidal inhibition curves of tyramine oxidation were about 70:30 irrespective of the concentration of tyramine. With PEA as substrate, the ratios of type A to type B activities were found to increase from low values at low concentrations to about 1 at 0.5‐1.0 mM‐PEA, and even higher at further increased concentrations of PEA. At very low (0.01 mM) and high (10.0 mM) concentrations of PEA, single‐sigmoidal curves were obtained; with the high PEA concentration the activity was highly sensitive to clorgyline, whereas with the low concentration it was highly sensitive to deprenyl. In deprenyl‐pretreated mitochondrial preparations, all the remaining activity towards 0.5‐1.0 mM‐PEA was shown to be highly sensitive to clorgyline, demonstrating that this activity was indeed due to oxidation by type A MAO. The opposite result was obtained with deprenyl as inhibitor of clorgyline‐pretreated preparations, demonstrating that PEA at this concentration was also oxidized by type B MAO in rat brain mitochondria. The K3 values of type A and type B MAO for PEA were significantly different. On Lineweaver‐Burk analysis, plots with PEA as substrate for type A MAO in a deprenyl‐treated preparation were linear over a wide concentration range, whereas those for type B MAO in a clorgyline‐treated preparation were not linear, but showed substrate inhibition at higher concentrations of the substrate. It is concluded from the present findings that the effect of the substrate concentration must be considered in studies on the characteristics of multiple forms of MAO in various organs and species.