It is an open question how ion channel subunits that lack proteinprotein binding motifs become targeted and covalently modified by cellular signaling enzymes. Here, we show that Src-family protein tyrosine kinases (PTKs) bind to heteromultimeric Shakerfamily voltage-gated potassium (Kv) channels by interactions between the Src homology 3 (SH3) domain and the proline-rich SH3 domain ligand sequence in the Shaker-family subunit Kv1.5. Once bound to Kv1.5, Src-family PTKs phosphorylate adjacent subunits in the Kv channel heteromultimer that lack proline-rich SH3 domain ligand sequences. This SH3-dependent tyrosine phosphorylation contributes to significant suppression of voltage-evoked currents flowing through the heteromultimeric channel. These results demonstrate that Kv1.5 subunits function as SH3-dependent adaptor proteins that marshal Src-family kinases to heteromultimeric potassium channel signaling complexes, and thereby confer functional sensitivity upon coassembled channel subunits that are themselves not bound directly to Src-family kinases by allowing their phosphorylation. This is a mechanism for information transfer between subunits in heteromultimeric ion channels that is likely to underlie the generation of combinatorial signaling diversity in the control of cellular electrical excitability. P resent understanding of the interaction between regulatory signaling enzymes and ion channels is limited in several respects. First, although almost all ion channel subunits that have been tested are biophysically modulated in response to covalent modification by a variety of protein kinases (1-12), most ion channel subunits do not exhibit known protein-protein binding module ligand sequences. It is thus an open question how such ion channel subunits that lack protein-protein binding motifs become targeted by particular signaling enzymes. Second, although the majority of ion channels found in native tissues are heteromultimers (13-16), mechanistic analyses of ion channel interactions with signaling enzymes have been limited to homomultimers consisting of multiple copies of a single ion channel subunit. Thus, the functional regulation of heteromultimeric channels by signaling enzymes and the nature of the interaction between distinct subunits within a heteromultimer and stably associated signaling enzymes remains unexplored.It has been demonstrated that voltage-gated potassium (Kv)1.5-containing channels are associated with Src-family protein tyrosine kinases (PTKs) by means of Src homology 3 (SH3) domain interactions with the Kv1.5 proline-rich SH3 domain ligand sequence (ref. 1; T.C.H., J. Marquez, and I. B. Levitan, personal communication). When coexpressed in mammalian cells in culture, Kv1.5 is tyrosine phosphorylated by Src, and voltage-evoked currents are dramatically suppressed as a consequence (1). It is known that members of the mammalian Shaker family form heteromultimers in the mammalian brain (13,14,16). Whether heteromultimer formation provides a mechanism for the functionally relevant transfer of ...