Integrin β Cytoplasmic Domain Interactions with Phosphotyrosine-Binding Domains: A Structural Prototype for Diversity in Integrin Signaling

The cytoplasmic domains (tails) of heterodimeric integrin adhesion receptors mediate integrins' biological functions by binding to cytoplasmic proteins. Most integrin β tails contain one or two NPXY/F motifs that can form β turns. These motifs are part of a canonical recognition sequence for phosphotyrosine-binding (PTB) domains, protein modules that are present in a wide variety of signaling and cytoskeletal proteins. Indeed, talin and ICAP1-α bind to integrin β tails by means of a PTB domain-NPXY ligand interaction. To assess the generality of this interaction we examined the binding of a series of recombinant PTB domains to a panel of short integrin β tails. In addition to the known integrin-binding proteins, we found that Numb (a negative regulator of Notch signaling) and Dok-1 (a signaling adaptor involved in cell migration) and their isolated PTB domain bound to integrin tails. Furthermore, Dok-1 physically associated with integrin αIIbβ3. Mutations of the integrin β tails confirmed that these interactions are canonical PTB domain-ligand interactions. First, the interactions were blocked by mutation of an NPXY motif in the integrin tail. Second, integrin class-specific interactions were observed with the PTB domains of Dab, EPS8, and tensin. We used this specificity, and a molecular model of an integrin β tail-PTB domain interaction to predict critical interacting residues. The importance of these residues was confirmed by generation of gain- and loss-of-function mutations in β7 and β3 tails. These data establish that short integrin β tails interact with a large number of PTB domain-containing proteins through a structurally conserved mechanism.