Phosphorylation of the 48-kDa subunit of the glycine receptor by protein kinase C

The postsynaptic glycine receptor purified from rat spinal cord is rapidly and specifically phosphorylated by protein kinase C. The target for phosphorylation is the strychnine-binding subunit of the receptor (molecular mass of approximately 48 kDa), which is phosphorylated on serine residues to a final stoichiometry of approximately 0.8 mol of phosphate/mol of subunit. The 48-kDa phosphoprotein was analyzed by proteolytic cleavage and peptide mapping in order to localize the site of phosphorylation within the receptor molecule. Examination of the 32P-labeled receptor fragments generated by digestion with N-chlorosuccinimide, cyanogen bromide, and endoproteinase lysine C and of the deduced amino acid sequence of the 48-kDa protein (Grenningloh, G., Rienitz, A., Schmitt, B., Methfessel, C., Zensen, M., Beyreuther, K., Gundelfinger, E. D., and Betz, H. (1987) Nature 328, 215-220) indicates that the phosphorylation site is located in a region corresponding to the major intracellular loop of the predicted structure of the glycine receptor subunit and suggests serine 391 as the phosphorylated residue. In fact, a synthetic peptide corresponding to residues 384-392 of the 48-kDa subunit was specifically phosphorylated by protein kinase C. Moreover, tryptic digests of this phosphopeptide and of the phosphorylated 48-kDa subunit of the glycine receptor migrated to the same position in two-dimensional peptide mapping. Furthermore, antibodies elicited against peptide 384-392 were shown to inhibit the protein kinase C-dependent phosphorylation of the 48-kDa polypeptide. Interestingly, the relative position of the phosphorylated domain is similar to those known or proposed to be phosphorylated in other ligand-gated ion channel receptor subunits, thus suggesting further the existence of a homologous regulatory region in these receptor proteins.