A Protein Whose Binding to Na,K-ATPase Is Regulated by Ouabain

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N. V. Dolgova¹, Yu. V. Kamanina¹, O. A. Akimova², S. N. Orlov², A. M. Rubtsov¹, and O. D. Lopina^1*

¹Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Biology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, 119992 Moscow, Russia; fax: (495) 939-3955; E-mail: od_lopina@mail.ru

²Centre de Recherche, Centre Hospitalier de l´Universite de Montreal, Hotel-Dieu, 3850 rue St-Urbain, Montreal, PQ, Canada H2W 1T7

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed.

Received April 12, 2007; Revision received May 22, 2007

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Immunoprecipitation of Na,K-ATPase from kidney homogenate by antibodies against alpha1-subunit results in the precipitation of several proteins together with the Na,K-ATPase. A protein with molecular mass of about 67 kD interacting with antibodies against melittin (melittin-like protein, MLP) was found in the precipitate when immunoprecipitation was done in the presence of ouabain. If immunoprecipitation was done using antibodies against melittin, MLP and Na,K-ATPase alpha1-subunit were detected in the precipitate, and the amount of alpha1-subunit in the precipitate was increased after the addition of ouabain to the immunoprecipitation medium. MLP was purified from mouse kidney homogenate using immunoaffinity chromatography with antibodies against melittin. The addition of MLP to purified FITC-labeled Na,K-ATPase decreases fluorescence in medium with K⁺ and increases it in medium with Na⁺. The enhancement of fluorescence depends upon the MLP concentration. The N-terminal sequence of MLP determined by the Edman method is the following: HPPKRVRSRLNG. No proteins with such N-terminal sequence were found in the protein sequence databases. However, we revealed five amino acid sequences that contain this peptide in the middle part of the chain at distance 553 amino acids from the C-terminus (that corresponds to protein with molecular mass of about 67 kD). Analysis of amino acid sequence located between C-terminus and HPPKRVRSRLNG in all found sequences has shown that they were highly conservative and include WD40 repeats. It is suggested that the 67-kD MLP either belongs to the found protein family or was a product of proteolysis of one of them.

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KEY WORDS: Na,K-ATPase, immunoprecipitation, melittin, ouabain, WD-repeats

DOI: 10.1134/S0006297907080081

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