Jx. Hu et al., The venus's-flytrap and cysteine-rich domains of the human Ca2+ receptor are not linked by disulfide bonds, J BIOL CHEM, 276(10), 2001, pp. 6901-6904
The extracellular N-terminal domain of the human Ca2+ receptor (hCaR) consi
sts of a Venus's-flytrap (VFT) domain and a cysteine-rich (Cys-rich) domain
. We have shown earlier that the Cys-rich domain is critical for signal tra
nsmission from the VFT domain to the seven-transmembrane domain. The VFT do
main contains 10 cysteines: two of them (Cys(129) and Cys(131)) were identi
fied as involved in intermolecular disulfide bonds necessary for homodimeri
zation, and six others (Cys(60)- Cys(101), Cys(358)-Cys(395), and Cys(437)-
Cys(449)) are predicted to form three intramolecular disulfide bonds. The C
ys-rich domain contains nine cysteines, the involvement of which in disulfi
de bond formation has not been defined. In this work, we asked whether the
remaining cysteines in the hCaR VFT, namely Cys(236) and Cys(482), form dis
ulfide bond(s) with cysteines in the Cys-rich domain. We constructed mutant
hCaRs with a unique tobacco etch virus (TEV) protease recognition site ins
erted between the VFT domain and the Cys-rich domain. These mutant hCaRs re
main fully functional compared with the wild type hCaR. After TEV protease
digestion of the mutant hCaR proteins, dimers of the VFT were identified on
Western blot under nonreducing conditions. We concluded that there is no d
isulfide bond between the VFT and the Cys-rich domains in the hCaR.