No abstract

Equilibrative Nucleoside Transporters (SLC29) are a family of proteins that transport nucleosides, nucleobases and nucleoside analogue drugs across cellular membranes. ENT1 is expressed ubiquitously in mammalian tissues and responsible for a significant portion of nucleoside analog drug uptake in humans. Despite the important clinical role of ENT1, many aspects of the regulation of this protein remain unknown. A major outstanding question in this field is the whether ENT1 is phosphorylated directly. To answer this question, we overexpressed tagged human (h) and mouse (m) ENT1, affinity purified protein using the tag, conducted phosphoamino acid analysis and found that m/hENT1 is predominantly phosphorylated at serine residues. The large intracellular loop of ENT1, between transmembrane domains 6 and 7, has been suggested to be a site of regulation by phosphorylation, therefore we generated His/Ubiquitin tagged peptides of this region and used them for in vitro kinase assays to identify target serines. Our data support a role for PKA and PKC in the phosphorylation of ENT1 within the intracellular loop and show that PKA can phosphorylate multiple sites within this loop while PKC specifically targets serines 279 and 286 and threonine 274. These data demonstrate, for the first time, that ENT1 is a phosphoprotein that can be directly phosphorylated at several sites by more than one kinase. The presence of multiple kinase targets within the loop suggests that ENT1 phosphorylation is considerably more complex than previously thought and thus ENT1 may be subject to phosphorylation by multiple pathways.

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To stimulate renal water reabsorption, vasopressin induces phosphorylation of Aquaporin-2 (AQP2) water channels at S256 and their redistribution from vesicles to the apical membrane, whereas vasopressin removal results in AQP2 ubiquitination at K270 and its internalization to multivesicular bodies (MVB). AQP2-E258K causes dominant nephrogenic diabetes insipidus (NDI), but its subcellular location is unclear, and the molecular reason for its involvement in dominant NDI is unknown. To unravel these, AQP2-E258K was studied in transfected polarized Madin-Darby canine kidney (MDCK) cells. In MDCK cells, AQP2-E258K mainly localized to MVB/lysosomes (Lys). Upon coexpression, wild-type (wt) AQP2 and AQP2-E258K formed multimers, which also localized to MVB/Lys, independent of forskolin stimulation. Orthophosphate labeling revealed that forskolin increased phosphorylation of wt-AQP2 and AQP2-E258K but not AQP2-S256A, indicating that the E258K mutation does not interfere with the AQP2 phosphorylation at S256. In contrast to wt-AQP2 but consistent with the introduced protein kinase C (PKC) consensus site, AQP2-E258K was phosphorylated by phorbol esters. Besides the 29-kDa band, however, an additional band of about 35 kDa was observed for AQP2-E258K only, which represented AQP2-E258K uniquely monoubiquitinated at K228 only. Analysis of several mutants interfering with AQP2-E258K phosphorylation, and/or ubiquitination, however, revealed that the MVB/lysosomal sorting of AQP2-E258K occurred independent of its monoubiquitination or phosphorylation by PKC. Instead, our data reveal that the loss of the E258 in AQP2-E258K is fundamental to its missorting to MVB/Lys and indicate that this amino acid has an important role in the proper structure formation of the C-terminal tail of AQP2.

Human Equilibrative Nucleoside Transporter 1 (hENT1) is an integral membrane protein that transports nucleosides and analog drugs across cellular membranes. Very little is known about intracellular processing and localization of hENT1. Here we show that disruption of a highly conserved triplet (PWN) near the N-terminus, or the last eight C-terminal residues (two hydrophobic triplets separated by a positive arginine) result in loss of plasma membrane localization and/or transport function. To understand the role of specific residues within these regions, we studied the localization patterns of N- or C-terminal deletion and/or substitution mutants of GFP-hENT1 using confocal microscopy. Quantification of GFP-hENT1 (mutant and wildtype) protein at the plasma membrane was conducted using nitrobenzylthioinosine (NBTI) binding. Functionality of the GFP-hENT1 mutants was determined by heterologous expression in Xenopus laevis oocytes followed by measurement of uridine uptake. Mutation of the proline within the PWN motif disrupts plasma membrane localization. C-terminal mutations (primarily within the hydrophobic triplets) lead to hENT1 retention within the cell (e.g. in the ER). Some mutants still localize to the plasma membrane but show reduced transport activity. These data suggest that these two regions contribute to the structural integrity and thus correct processing and function of hENT1.