Phosphorylation of CRE-BP1, a cyclic AMP response element binding protein, by protein kinase C and cyclic AMP-dependent protein kinase.

CRE-BP1 is a transcriptional activator binding to the cyclic AMP response element, which has a putative metal finger structure and the leucine zipper motif linked to a cluster of basic amino acids in the amino and carboxyl-terminal regions, respectively. The activities of a number of transcription factors are known to be controlled through phosphorylation and dephosphorylation. At the first step for understanding of the regulation of CRE-BP1, phosphorylation of CRE-BP1 was studied in vitro. The human recombinant CRE-BP1 was phosphorylated by protein kinase C and cyclic AMP-dependent protein kinase. These two protein kinases recognized distinct seryl residues of CRE-BP1. Amino acid sequence analysis after phosphopeptide map indicated that two seryl residues, Ser-340 and Ser-367, located in the basic region of CRE-BP1 were identified as the major protein kinase C phosphorylation sites, whereas Ser-62 downstream of the metal finger structure was determined as the phosphorylation site by cyclic AMP-dependent protein kinase. The phosphorylation of CRE-BP1 by these two protein kinases may regulate the function of this transcriptional activator protein.