The nature of amino acid 482 of human ABCG2 affects substrate transport and ATP hydrolysis but not substrate binding

Several members of the ATP‐binding cassette (ABC) transporter superfamily, including P‐glycoprotein and the half‐transporter ABCG2, can confer multidrug resistance to cancer cells in culture by functioning as ATP‐dependent efflux pumps. ABCG2 variants harboring a mutation at arginine 482 have been cloned from several drug‐resistant cell lines, and these variants differ in their substrate transport phenotype. In this study, we changed the wild‐type arginine 482 in human ABCG2 to each one of the 19 other standard amino acids and expressed each one transiently in HeLa cells. Using the 5D3 antibody that recognizes a cell surface epitope of ABCG2, we observed that all the mutants were expressed at the cell surface. However, the mutant ABCG2 proteins differed markedly in transport activity. All of the variants were capable of transporting one or more of the substrates used in this study, with the exception of the R482K mutant, which is completely devoid of transport ability. Six of the mutants (R482G, R482H, R482K, R482P, R482T, and R482Y) and the wild‐type protein (R482wt) were selected for studies of basal and stimulated ATPase activity and photoaffinity labeling with the substrate analog [125I]iodoarylazidoprazosin. Whereas these seven ABCG2 variants differed markedly in ATPase activity, all were able to specifically bind the substrate analog [125I]iodoarylazidoprazosin. These data suggest that residue 482 plays an important role in substrate transport and ATP turnover, but that the nature of this amino acid may not be important for substrate recognition and binding.