Highly purified Aplysia californica ADP-ribosyl cyclase was found to be a multifunctional enzyme. In addition to the known transformation of NAD+ into cADP-ribose this enzyme is able to catalyse the solvolysis (hydrolysis and methanolysis) of cADP-ribose. This cADP-ribose hydrolase activity, which becomes detectable only at high concentrations of the enzyme, is amplified with analogues such as pyridine adenine dinucleotide, in which the cleavage rate of the pyridinium-ribose bond is much reduced compared with NAD+. Although the specificity ratio Vmax/Km is in favour of NAD+ by 4 orders of magnitude, this multifunctionality allowed us to propose a ‘partitioning’ reaction scheme for the Aplysia enzyme, similar to that established previously for mammalian CD38/NAD+ glycohydrolases. This mechanism involves the formation of a single oxocarbenium-type intermediate that partitions to cADP-ribose and solvolytic products via competing pathways. In favour of this mechanism was the finding that the enzyme also catalysed the hydrolysis of NMN+, a substrate that cannot undergo cyclization. The major difference between the mammalian and the invertebrate enzymes resides in their relative cyclization/hydrolysis rate-constant ratios, which dictate their respective yields of cADP-ribose (ADP-ribosyl cyclase activity) and ADP-ribose (NAD+ glycohydrolase activity). For the Aplysia enzyme's catalysed transformation of NAD+ we favour a mechanism where the formation of cADP-ribose precedes that of ADP-ribose; i.e. macroscopically the invertebrate ADP-ribosyl cyclase conforms to a sequential reaction pathway as a limiting form of the partitioning mechanism.

CAKIR-KIEFER, C., MULLER-STEFFNER, H., & SCHUBER, F. (2000). Unifying mechanism for Aplysia ADP-ribosyl cyclase and CD38/NAD+ glycohydrolases. Biochemical Journal, 349(1), 203–210.