We have recently discovered an alternative function of the putative metastasis suppressor protein Nm23, which is identical to nucleoside diphosphate kinase, as a protein phosphotransferase in vitro. While purified native Nm23 protein did not phosphorylate other proteins, we could purify a Nm23-associated protein that activates the protein phosphotransferase function; it was identified as a glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) isoenzyme. Co-expression and purification of (His) 6 -tagged GAPDH in combination with either Nm23-H1 or Nm23-H2 in baculovirus-infected Sf9 cells showed that only Nm23-H1, but not Nm23-H2, forms a stable complex with GAPDH. Protein phosphotransferase activity was confirmed for the recombinant GAPDH⅐Nm23-H1 complex but not for either of the enzymes alone, nor was this activity observed after simple mixing of the purified proteins in vitro. The molecular mass of the highly purified recombinant GAPDH⅐ Nm23-H1 complex suggests that a dimer of GAPDH interacts with a dimer of Nm23-H1. In contrast to the complex with GAPDH, co-expression of Nm23-H1 with antioxidant protein (MER-5) or creatine kinase did not activate the protein phosphotransferase function, indicating that this activation may specifically require GAPDH as a binding partner.The first member of the nm23 gene family has been isolated due to its reduced expression in highly metastatic clones of murine melanoma cells as compared with their nonmetastatic counterparts (1). The proposed metastasis suppressor activity of this gene, now termed nm23-H1, has subsequently been confirmed in numerous functional studies: transfection of nm23-H1 cDNA into highly metastatic melanoma or mamma carcinoma cell lines resulted in a significant reduction of metastatic potential in vivo (2-5). In many human tumors, such as mammary carcinomas, hepatocellular carcinomas, and malignant melanomas, reduced expression of nm23 was correlated with lymph node metastasis and decreased disease-free survival of the patients (reviewed in Ref. 6). In other tumor types, however, increased expression of nm23 was associated with cell proliferation and advanced stages of the disease (7, 8), suggesting complex biological functions of the gene product(s). The later cloned gene nm23-H2, although 81% identical to nm23-H1, provided little or no evidence for a metastasis suppressor activity in tumor expression studies and in a transfection assay (3, 9 -12). Two further members of the nm23 gene family, DR-nm23 (13) and nm23-H4 (14), are more distantly related to the first discovered genes and no experimental data are known so far regarding their metastasis suppressor potential. The biochemical mechanism(s) underlying the antimetastatic properties of Nm23-H1 are unknown. All nm23 genes as known today have been demonstrated to encode for nucleoside diphosphate (NDP) 1 kinases. These long known enzymes are ubiquitously expressed and remarkably conserved throughout evolution. For example, the human NDP kinase is 80, 62, and 40% identical to the NDP kinases from Drosophila,...