Digestion of scallop muscle membrane fractions with trypsin led to release of soluble polypeptides derived from the large cytoplasmic domain of a Na ؉ -Ca 2؉ exchanger. In the presence of 1 mM Ca 2؉ , the major product was a peptide of ϳ37 kDa, with an N terminus corresponding to residue 401 of the NCX1 exchanger. In the presence of 10 mM EGTA, ϳ16-and ϳ19-kDa peptides were the major products. Polyclonal rabbit IgG raised against the 37-kDa peptide also bound to the 16-and 19-kDa soluble tryptic peptides and to a 105-110-kDa polypeptide in the undigested membrane preparation. The 16-kDa fragment corresponded to the N-terminal part of the 37-kDa peptide. The Na ϩ -Ca 2ϩ exchangers of the plasma membrane catalyze a secondary active transport process dependent on the Na ϩ electrochemical gradient generated by the Na ϩ ,K ϩ -ATPase and play a major role in cellular Ca 2ϩ homeostasis in many tissues (1). Three Na ϩ -Ca 2ϩ exchanger proteins (NCX1, NCX2, and NCX3) have been described in vertebrates (2-5). The molecular biology of the Na ϩ -Ca 2ϩ exchanger (Calx) from Drosophila has been described (6, 7), and an exchanger from squid has been reported (8). An electroneutral Na ϩ -Ca 2ϩ antiporter has also been found in mitochondria, where it may be involved in modulating matrix Ca 2ϩ in response to changes in cytoplasmic Ca 2ϩ concentration (9, 10). The protein moieties of the plasma membrane Na ϩ -Ca 2ϩ exchanger proteins are close in overall size (ϳ103-106 kDa) (4, 11) to the SERCA 1 -type Ca 2ϩ -ATPase pumps, which have a molecular mass of ϳ110 kDa (12). In the case of NCX1, a signal sequence of 32 amino acid residues at the N terminus of the protein is removed post-translationally (13-15). From the N terminus, structure prediction algorithms suggest that five transmembrane segments lead to a large cytoplasmic, followed by four C-terminal transmembrane helices (14 -16 [17][18][19][20]. This binds Ca 2ϩ cooperatively and provides regulation of the exchanger through the I 2 mechanism, in which increased levels of cytoplasmic Ca 2ϩ activate the enzyme (19). The regulatory Ca 2ϩ binding region involves the -1 repeat and extends through the variable region between the two  repeats to the beginning of -2 (18). Two acidic triads, one at the C terminus of -1 (Asp 478(446) -Asp-Asp) and one in the variable region, (Asp 530(498) -Asp-Asp), just N-terminal to -2, are important components of this high affinity Ca 2ϩ binding site (18). The isolated cardiac exchanger shows three bands on silverstained SDS gels: a glycosylated 120-kDa species corresponding to the native exchanger, a glycosylated 160-kDa polypeptide representing oxidized exchanger, and an unglycosylated polypeptide of 70 kDa, which arises by proteolysis of the 120-kDa protein at the Asp 289(257) -Gly or Asp 303(270) -Gly bonds in the large cytoplasmic domain (11,(21)(22)(23). Digestion of the exchanger with chymotrypsin leads to a loss of regulatory function, probably through proteolysis localized in the cytoplasmic f loop (4).The study of the protein chemistr...