A scarce, soluble, conserved protein was identified as the nonphosphorylated precursor of two related 42-kilodalton phosphoproteins that contain phosphotyrosine in mitogen-stimulated but not control fibroblasts.When cultures of resting fibroblasts are stimulated with many polypeptide or nonpeptide mitogens, there is an immediate increase in the phosphorylation of cell proteins at tyrosine (4,12,22). For example, the exposure of quiescent cultures of mouse 3T3 cells to epidermal growth factor or platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF) induces an approximate doubling of the protein phosphotyrosine content (4,12,22). An analysis of total cellular phosphoproteins by sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS)-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis showed that about 25% of the total increase in tyrosine phosphorylation occurs through a fivefold increase in the phosphotyrosine content of proteins in the 40-to 42-kilodalton range (22). Proteins in this size range are among those recognized by antibodies specific for phosphotyrosine in extracts of PDGF-treated cells (13,14).Two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis revealed five phosphoproteins that have molecular masses between 40 and 45 kilodaltons and are rapidly phosphorylated in response to epidermal growth factor of PDGF (4, 21). Each contains significant amounts of phosphotyrosine and phosphoserine, and in four of the five phosphoproteins lesser amounts of phosphothreonine are detectable (4). It seems that these five phosphoproteins collectively contain most of the phosphotyrosine in proteins of ca. 42 kilodaltons and thus account for a significant fraction of the rapidly phosphorylated tyrosine in epidermal growth factor-or PDGF-treated cells. Two of the five phosphoproteins (pp42A and pp42B) have identical SDS gel mobilities and are closely related to each other, as determined by one-dimensional peptide mapping (11). pp42B and a variable number of the other four phosphoproteins are phosphorylated at tyrosine under a variety of other conditions that lead to cell growth, including exposure to other growth factors (such as fibroblast growth factor) and nonpeptide mitogens (such as some tumor promoters) and transformation with certain retroviruses (1, 5-7, 11, 17, 18, 21; unpublished results). The correlation between mitogen addition and the appearance of pp42B is consistent with the notion that this phosphoprotein might be important for some event in the mitogenic response.We suspected that pp42B arises from a precursor protein through the actions of growth factor-activated and transformation-activated protein-tyrosine kinases and protein-serine or protein-threonine kinases. (24) was added to the labeling medium to a final concentration of 0.83 to 1.0 nM for 5 to 15 min. Cell fractionation procedures have been described before (8). Labeled cell cultures were prepared for twodimensional gel electrophoresis as described before (6,15). Samples of 0.01 ml were analyzed on isoelectric focusing gels as described before (15), except that the urea concentration was 9.15 M and the am...