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J. Biol. Chem., Vol. 278, Issue 51, 51833-51840, December 19, 2003
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¶
From the
Departments of
Pharmaceutical Sciences and ¶Ophthalmology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California 90089-9121
Received for publication, July 30, 2003 , and in revised form, September 16, 2003.
| ABSTRACT |
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40% activity and the 15 other transporters exhibited more than 50% gly-sar uptake when compared with wild type (WT)-hPepT1. Gly-sar uptake for the 16 active transporters containing cysteine mutations was then measured in the presence of 2.5 mM 2-aminoethyl methanethiosulfonate hydrobromide (MTSEA) or 1 mM [2-(trimethylammonium) ethyl] methanethiosulfonate bromide (MTSET). Gly-sar uptake was significantly inhibited for each of the 16 single cysteine mutants in the presence of 2.5 mM MTSEA. In contrast, significant inhibition of uptake was only observed for K278C-, M279C-, V280C-, T281C-, M284C-, L286C-, P291C-, and D298C-hPepT1 in the presence of 1 mM MTSET. MTSET modification of R282C-hPepT1 resulted in a significant increase in gly-sar uptake. To investigate this further, we mutated WT-hPepT1 to R282A-, R282E-, and R282K-hPepT1. R282E-hPepT1 showed a 43% reduction in uptake activity, whereas R282A- and R282K-hPepT1 had activities comparable with WT-hPepT1, suggesting a role for the Arg-282 positive charge in substrate translocation. Most of the amino acids that were MTSET-sensitive upon cysteine mutation, including R282C, are located toward the intracellular end of TMS7. Hence, our results suggest that TMS7 of hPepT1 is relatively solvent-accessible along most of its length but that the intracellular end of the transmembrane domain is particularly so. From a structure-function perspective, we speculate that the extracellular end of TMS7 may shift following substrate binding, providing the basis for channel opening and substrate translocation. | INTRODUCTION |
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-helical transmembrane segments. It is mainly expressed in the small intestine (1), proximal tubules of the kidney (2), and in the lysosomes of liver cells (2), pancreatic cells (3), and renal cells (4). PepT1 has received considerable attention as a drug carrier system in the past several years (5-8). It assists the proton-dependent uphill (against the concentration gradient) apical uptake of nutritional di- and tripeptides (9, 10), various peptidomimetic drugs such as
-lactam antibiotics (11), the anticancer drug bestatin (12), and many non-peptidic compounds (13, 14). Its broad substrate specificity along with its high capacity makes it a highly sought after target to increase the bioavailability of orally administered drugs and prodrugs.
Prodrugs have been designed to resemble peptides in order to facilitate their recognition by PepT1 (13, 15). A recent study by Anand et al. (16) showed that dipeptide ester prodrugs of acyclovir have high affinity toward hPepT1 and seem to be promising candidates in the treatment of ocular and oral herpes virus infections. However, the rational design of drugs and prodrugs as substrates has been limited because the tertiary structure of the transporter has not yet been elucidated. Several attempts have been made to determine the nature of its substrate-binding site and proton-binding site (17-19), and we have proposed a rudimentary computer model for hPepT1 based on some preliminary mutagenesis results (20). According to this model, seven amphipathic
-helical transmembrane segments (TMS1 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, and 10) form an aqueous channel through which the substrate is transported (20). However, experimental validation of this model is required in order to define the fine structure of the substrate-binding site and to understand the mechanism of substrate transport.
The substituted cysteine accessibility method (SCAM) has been used successfully to study the fine structure of various ion channels and transporters and, in particular, to determine the portion of transmembrane segments that line the channel pore or solute pathway (21-24). This method involves scanning cysteine mutagenesis of a transmembrane domain followed by covalent modification with an aqueous-soluble cysteine-reactive reagent; usually a methanethiosulfonate (MTS). Substrate uptake is used as a measure of the extent of modification, and hence solvent accessibility, of a particular amino acid. This approach has been utilized to obtain critical insight into the structures of the Glut1 glucose transporter (25), dopamine D2 receptor (26, 27), and glutamate transporter gltT (28).
In performing such studies, it is first of importance to determine the reactivity of endogenous cysteines with the cysteine-modifying reagents. We have shown previously that the 11 endogenous cysteines present in WT-hPepT1 either do not react with the MTS reagents or that their modification with the MTS reagents does not have a significant impact on hPepT1 activity (29). This makes the application of SCAM to hPepT1 particularly appropriate. Indeed, we have recently shown that TMS5 is an integral part of the hPepT1 substrate translocation pathway by using a systematic cysteine-scanning mutagenesis approach in conjunction with MTS reagents (29). These results suggested that TMS5 is slightly tilted from the vertical axis of the channel, with the exofacial half-forming a classical amphipathic
-helix and the cytoplasmic half being highly solvent-accessible (29).
To determine the contributions of TMS7 in forming a part of the hPepT1 substrate-binding region, we have used the same approach to evaluate the relative orientation, functional importance, and solvent accessibility of this transmembrane segment with respect to the aqueous channel through which the substrate is transported. Our cysteine-scanning data and further mutagenesis results for Arg-282 suggest that TMS7 is a relatively solvent-accessible transmembrane segment and is particularly so at its cytoplasmic end.
| EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURES |
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Site-directed MutagenesisThe hPepT1 cDNA (kindly provided by Dr. Matthias A. Hedigar) was subcloned into the eukaryotic expression plasmid pcDNA3 (Invitrogen) by ligating the 2306 KpnI/BamHI fragment into the multiple cloning sites of pcDNA3. This pcDNA3-hPepT1 plasmid is under the control of the cytomegalovirus promoter. This plasmid was used as a template for all the mutagenesis reactions. The standard site-directed mutagenesis protocol provided by the manufacturer was followed using the Gene EditorTM site-directed mutagenesis kit (Promega Corp., Madison, WI). The mutated cDNA was transformed into an Escherichia coli strain, BMH71-18 Mut.S, which is incapable of correcting mismatches. This process of amplification was repeated once more using the JM109-competent cells to enrich the mutated population. The transformed cells were then plated onto ampicillin LB plates and incubated overnight. Individual colonies obtained on the ampicillin LB plates were amplified further. The plasmid extracted from each colony was then subjected to DNA sequencing analysis to verify the mutations (Genemed Synthesis Inc., San Francisco).
Transient Transfection of the Mutants in HEK293 CellsThe transfection of hPepT1 in HEK293 cells (ATCC CRL-1573) has been reported previously (20). These cells were used for the expression of WT-hPepT1 and the mutated transporters because of their low endogenous dipeptide transport activity. The uptake of [3H]gly-sar in WT-hPepT1-transfected HEK293 cells was 100 times higher than that in mock-transfected HEK293 cells (20). The HEK293 cells were split into 60 x 15-mm dishes and grown overnight (>20 h) at 50-75% confluence. The medium was then removed, and 2 ml of transfection solution (2 ml of Dulbecco's modified Eagle's medium with 20 µl of DEAE-dextran (25 mg/ml) and 10 µl of chloroquine (20 mM)) was added to each dish. The mixture was then incubated at 37 °C for 2 h. The transfection solution was prepared previously in a stock of 20 ml which was then divided into 10 portions (2 ml each); 1 µg of DNA was added to each portion, and the mixture was incubated at 37 °C for 10 min. After removing the transfection solution, 2 ml of 10% Me2SO in DPBS (sterile PBS) was added to each dish. Following an incubation period of 2 min at room temperature, the Me2SO solution was removed and replaced by 4 ml of fresh Dulbecco's modified Eagle's medium in each dish. The cells were grown overnight, and then each dish was split into 6 wells of 12-well plates.
ImmunolocalizationThe procedure for immunofluorescence microscopy staining has been described in detail previously (30). Briefly, transfected HEK293 cells were plated onto coverslips and cultured for 48 h. The coverslips were then incubated with 3.7% formaldehyde in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) at room temperature for 20 min. After washing 3 times with PBS, the coverslips were permeabilized with 0.5% Triton X-100 for 15 min, washed once, and then blocked with 1% bovine serum in PBS at room temperature for 30 min. After washing once with 0.05% Tween 20 in PBS (PBST), the coverslips were incubated with primary antibodies for 2 h. After washing 3 times with PBST, they were incubated with fluorescein isothiocyanate-conjugated secondary antibodies for 1 h. The coverslips were washed again with PBST (twice) and PBS (once). Finally, the coverslips were mounted onto slides with anti-fade medium and examined by fluorescence microscopy.
Immunoprecipitation and Western BlotsCell lysates were precleared with Sepharose CL-2B cross-linked 2% beaded agarose (Sigma) combined with affinity-purified anti-hPepT1 antibody, and the immunoprecipitates were collected with protein A-Sepharose (Sigma). Further details of the protocol will be subsequently published.2 The immunoprecipitates were fractionated by electrophoresis on an 8% pre-cast polyacrylamide electrophoresis gel (Gradipore, Inc., Hawthorne, NY), blotted onto Trans-Blot® transfer medium pure nitrocellulose membranes (Bio-Rad), probed with affinity-purified anti-hPepT1 primary antibody, and visualized with secondary antibody and chemiluminescence (30).
Inhibition Studies with Sulfhydryl ReagentsPrior to the uptake measurements, the transfected cells, adhered to the wells, were washed with the transport medium (MES-Tris, pH 6 buffer). Each well was then incubated for 10 min at 37 °C with a solution containing [3H]gly-sar (0.5 µCi/ml) after preincubation with 2.5 mM MTSEA or 1 mM MTSET (Toronto Research Chemicals Inc., Ontario, Canada) for 10 min. After washing three times in ice-cold MES-Tris, pH 6.0 buffer, the cells were lysed in 1 ml of lysis buffer (1% SDS). BCA protein assay reagents were used to determine the protein content of each well, and the cell-associated radioactivity was measured in a Beckman liquid scintillation counter. Mock-transfected and WT-hPepT1-transfected HEK293 cells were used as negative and positive controls, respectively. The characteristics of dipeptide uptake by WT-hPepT1-transfected HEK293 cells in the presence of MTS reagents were very similar to those in the absence of the MTS reagent (29).
Computational AnalysisA helical wheel model of the transmembrane segment 7 of hPepT1 was constructed using the Lasergene software (DNAstar, Inc., Madison, WI). The three-dimensional models were generated using in-house software (TMD) and viewed using WebLab ViewerPro 3.7 (Accelrys Inc., San Diego).
| RESULTS |
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40% activity, and the 15 remaining transporters exhibited more than 50% gly-sar uptake when compared with WT-hPepT1 (Fig. 3). We assessed the solvent accessibilities of the cysteine residues in the 19 mutated transporter proteins in order to determine the residues that would likely be a part of the substrate translocation pathway. This was achieved by measuring the specific uptake activities of these proteins after preincubation with the hydrophilic sulfhydryl-specific chemical reagents MTSET (1 mM) and MTSEA (2.5 mM), and comparing these data to those measured in the absence of these reagents (Figs. 4 and 5). MTSET is completely membrane-impermeable, but MTSEA is slightly membrane-permeable and has a molecular volume about 60% that of MTSET (molecular volume = 109 Å3).
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The transport activity of R282C-hPepT1 and I288C-hPepT1 was significantly increased following incubation with 1 mM MTSET (p < 0.05, n = 3-6) (Fig. 5). The result for R282C-hPepT1 was somewhat surprising, because Arg-282 is positively charged and is expected to be in an aqueous environment. Hence, we expected that R282C would be accessible to the MTS reagents and that this would result in a significant inhibition of gly-sar uptake. However, we observed that after incubation with 1 mM MTSET, the transport activity of R282C-hPepT1 was similar to WT-hPepT1. To explore this observation further, we measured the gly-sar uptake activities of R282E- and R282K-hPepT1 (Fig. 6). We have reported previously (20) that R282A-hPepT1 showed a small reduction in gly-sar uptake, but the difference from that of WT-hPepT1 was not significant. R282K-hPepT1 showed uptake similar to that of WT-hPepT1 (n = 3-6, p < 0.05). In contrast, R282E-hPepT1 showed an
43% reduction in gly-sar uptake when compared with WT-hPepT1 (n = 3-6, p < 0.05).
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| DISCUSSION |
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-helix (29). The TMS7 helical wheel (Fig. 7) indicates that this transmembrane domain is not classically amphipathic. However, representation of the solvent-accessible and non-solvent-accessible residues in a lateral view of TMS7 (Fig. 8) suggests that the properties of the helix differ at its extracellular and intracellular ends. In the following paragraphs we examine the potential functional roles of amino acids in various region of TMS7.
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W294C-hPepT1 showed a relatively small reduction in glysar uptake in the presence of MTSET, but the difference between its uptake and that of the wild type protein was significant. We have shown previously (20) that a W294A mutation in hPepT1 influenced the kinetics of gly-sar uptake and, in particular, had a significant effect on the Michaelis-Menten Km value, which was almost 10 times larger that for WT-hPepT1. This is notable, because most other mutations of hPepT1 amino acids in putative transmembrane domains that influence uptake kinetics tend to show altered Vmax values (20) and do not influence Km. Hence, we suggest that Trp-294 largely plays a role in maintaining the structural integrity of the protein, but probably does not interact directly with the substrate. Its location may lie at the interface between the solvent-accessible and -inaccessible regions, and this is consistent with the MTSET modification data and with the three-dimensional helical structure shown in Fig. 8. We note that W294C-hPepT1 did not show reduced uptake compared with WT-hPepT1 (Fig. 3), in contrast to W294A-hPepT1 (20). We have not followed up this observation further, but it may be that the somewhat larger size of the cysteine side chain, compared with alanine, sufficiently reflects the steric bulk of the tryptophan side chain and better maintains the correct helical packing.
The most surprising finding was that the mutation of Arg-282 to a cysteine did not have any significant effect on hPepT1 activity and that R282C did not show any significant inhibition of gly-sar uptake after incubation with the membrane-impermeable MTSET. One would expect that arginine, being a positively charged amino acid, would be facing the aqueous substrate pathway and would be reactive toward the MTS reagent when mutated to a cysteine, causing a significant inhibition of gly-sar uptake. However, the results are contradictory to these expectations. After incubation with 1 mM MTSET, R282C-hPepT1 exhibits WT-hPepT1-like gly-sar uptake (
20% increase in uptake activity, compared with R282C-hPepT1 in the absence of MTSET). We have also shown previously that R282A-hPepT1 has activity comparable with WT-hPepT1 (20). To investigate these observations further, we generated the R282K- and R282E-hPepT1 proteins. Our results showed that R282K-hPepT1 retains WT-hPepT1-like activity, whereas R282E-hPepT1 has a 43% reduction in its activity. This suggests that the positive charge is important at amino acid position 282, and we speculate that the 20% increase in uptake activity of R282C-hPepT1 in the presence of MTSET is due to the formation of a "pseudo-arginine" at position 282 by the MTSET (Fig. 9). However, we are unable to explain the increase in I288C-hPepT1 activity after incubation with 1 mM MTSET or the decrease in R282C-hPepT1 activity after incubation with 2.5 mM MTSEA.
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30 amino acids), which suggests that TMS7 and TMS8 are proximal. Considering the vertical lengths of these 2 transmembrane segments and assuming that they are adjacent to each other, Arg-282 in TMS7 and Asp-341 in TMS8 are located approximately at the same depth from the extracellular side of the lipid membrane. Hence they should lie in close proximity to each other and may potentially form an Arg-282 to Asp-341 salt bridge. Supporting this idea is the observation that D341A-hPepT1 exhibits WT-hPepT1 like activity,3 similarly to R282A-hPepT1. Helical wheel analysis of the effects of cysteine-scanning and MTS modification in TMS7 of hPepT1 are reminiscent of the findings obtained for TMS7 of the facilitative glucose transporter Glut1 (32) but sharply contrast with the results obtained for TMS5 of hPepT1 (29). The helical wheel arrangement of sulfhydryl reagent-sensitive residues on TMS5 and TMS7 of hPepT1 is strikingly similar to the arrangement observed in TMS5 and TMS7 of Glut1 (32, 33). However, a lateral view of TMS7 of the two proteins suggests that there are a number of differences between hPepT1 and Glut1, and in particular, the extracellular end of TMS7 of hPepT1 appears to be rather less solvent-accessible than the same region of Glut1 TMS7. Hence, our data suggest that the structures of hPepT1 and Glut1 may be similar in a general sense and that there may be value in further comparison of the putative substrate translocation mechanisms of the two proteins. However, it remains likely that the details of these mechanisms will be significantly different. Preliminary molecular modeling of the likely interactions between hPePT1 TMS7 and TMS8, based on data from this and other mutagenesis and SCAM studies, allows us to speculate that the extracellular end of TMS7 may shift following substrate binding, providing the basis for channel opening and substrate translocation. We intend to further probe this speculative proposal by mutagenesis and SCAM analysis of other hPepT1 transmembrane domains.
| FOOTNOTES |
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To whom correspondence should be addressed: Dept. of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Southern California School of Pharmacy, 1985 Zonal Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90089-9121. Tel.: 323-442-3310; Fax: 323-442-1390; E-mail: ihaworth{at}usc.edu.
1 The abbreviations used are: TMS, transmembrane segment; MES, 4-morpholineethanesulfonic acid; MTS, methanethiosulfonate; MTSEA, 2-aminoethyl methanethiosulfonate hydrobromide; MTSET, [2-(trimethylammonium) ethyl]methanethiosulfonate bromide; PBS, phosphate-buffered saline; gly-sar, glycyl-sarcosine; WT, wild type; SCAM, substituted cysteine accessibility method. ![]()
2 C. Chu, C. T. Okamoto, and V. H. L. Lee, manuscript in preparation. ![]()
3 A. A. Kulkarni, I. S. Haworth, T. Uchiyama, and V. H. L. Lee, unpublished data. ![]()
4 W. S. Meng, H. von Grafenstein, and I. S. Haworth, unpublished results. ![]()
| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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| REFERENCES |
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