Journal
PROTEIN SCIENCE
Volume 14, Issue 11, Pages 2793-2803Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1110/ps.051630305
Keywords
protein tyrosine kinase; ErbB; HER; FRET
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Funding
- NIDDK NIH HHS [DK 44684] Funding Source: Medline
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The precise regulation of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) signaling is crucial to its function in cellular growth control. Various studies have suggested that the G terminal phosphorylation domain, itself a substrate for the EGFR kinase activity,. exerts a regulatory influence upon it, although the molecular mechanism for this regulation is unknown. The fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) technique was employed to examine how C-terminal domain conformational changes in the context of receptor activation and autophosphorylation might regulate EGFR enzymatic activity. A novel FRET reporter system was devised in which recombinant purified EGFR intracellular domain (ICD) proteins of varying C-terminal lengths were site-specifically labeled at their extreme C termini with blue fluorescent protein (BFP) and a fluorescent nucleotide analog, 2'(3')-O-(2,4,6-trinitrophenyl)-adenosine 5'-triphosphate (TNP-ATP), binding at their active sites. This novel BFP/TNP-ATP FRET pair demonstrated efficient energy transfer as evidenced by appreciable BFP-donor quenching by bound TNP-ATP. In particular, a marked reduction in energy transfer was observed for the full-length BFP-labeled EGFR-ICD protein upon phosphorylation, likely reflecting its movement away from the active site. The estimated distances from the BFP module to the TNP-ATP-occupied active site for the full-length and C-terminally truncated proteins also reveal the possible folding geometry of this domain with respect to the kinase core. The present studies demonstrate the first use of BFP/TNP-ATP as a FRET reporter system. Furthermore, the results described here provide biophysical evidence for phosphorylation-dependent conformational changes in the C-terminal phosphorylation domain and its likely interaction with the kinase core.
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