No abstract

Increasing evidence indicates that the integrin family of cell adhesion receptors can transduce biochemical signals from the extracellular matrix to the cell interior to modulate cell growth and differentiation. We have shown that integrin/ligand interactions can trigger tyrosine phosphorylation of a protein of M(r) 120,000 (pp120), so it is possible that signal transduction by integrins might involve activation of intracellular protein tyrosine kinases as an early event in cell binding to the extracellular matrix. Here we report that pp120 is identical to the focal adhesion-associated protein tyrosine kinase pp125FAK (refs 3, 4). We show that tyrosine phosphorylation of this protein is modulated both by cell adhesion and transformation by pp60v-src, and that these changes in phosphorylation are correlated with increased pp125FAK tyrosine kinase activity. A model is proposed to relate these findings to the molecular basis of anchorage-independent growth of transformed cells.

The tyrosine kinase activity of c-Src is stimulated during mitosis by dephosphorylation of its regulatory tyrosine residue. This is associated with increased accessibility of its Src homology-2 (SH2) domain for binding a phosphotyrosine-containing peptide. But physiological targets of activated c-Src in mitosis have not yet been identified. Here we report that a 68K protein (p68) becomes tyrosine-phosphorylated and physically associates with Src during mitosis in mouse fibroblasts. p68 independently binds the Src SH2 and SH3 domains in vitro and both domains are required for p68 phosphorylation and binding in vivo. p68 is closely related to the p62 protein that is associated with the Ras GTPase-activating protein (GAP) and selectively binds, directly or indirectly, polyribonucleotides. Because the Src SH3 domain also binds heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein K, these results raise the intriguing possibility that c-Src may regulate the processing, trafficking or translation of RNA in a cell-cycle-dependent manner.

Protein tyrosine phosphatase α (PTPα) is believed to dephosphorylate physiologically the Src protooncogene at phosphotyrosine (pTyr)527, a critical negative-regulatory residue. It thereby activates Src, and PTPα overexpression neoplastically transforms NIH 3T3 cells. pTyr789 in PTPα is constitutively phosphorylated and binds Grb2, an interaction that may inhibit PTPα activity. We show here that this phosphorylation also specifically enables PTPα to dephosphorylate pTyr527. Tyr789→Phe mutation abrogates PTPα-Src binding, dephosphorylation of pTyr527 (although not of other substrates), and neoplastic transformation by overexpressed PTPα in vivo. We suggest that pTyr789 enables pTyr527 dephosphorylation by a pilot binding with the Src SH2 domain that displaces the intramolecular pTyr527-SH2 binding. Consistent with model predictions, we find that excess SH2 domains can disrupt PTPα-Src binding and can block PTPα-mediated dephosphorylation and activation in proportion to their affinity for pTyr789. Moreover, we show that, as predicted by the model, catalytically defective PTPα has reduced Src binding in vivo. The displacement mechanism provides another potential control point for physiological regulation of Src-family signal transduction pathways.

Activation of Ras during mid-G1 phase appears to differ in many respects from its rapid activation by growth factors, suggesting a novel mechanism of regulation that may be intrinsic to cell-cycle progression. Furthermore, the temporal dissociation between Ras and ERK activation suggests that Ras targets alternate effector pathways during G1-phase progression.