Spectrin assembly in avian erythroid development is determined by competing reactions of subunit homo- and hetero-oligomerization.

Erythroid differentiation entails the biogenesis of a membrane skeleton, a network of proteins underlying and interacting with the plasma membrane, whose major constituent is the heterodimeric protein spectrin, composed of two structurally similar but distinct subunits, alpha (relative molecular mass (Mr) 240,000) and beta (Mr 220,000), which interact side-on with each other to form a long rod-like molecule. Interaction of this network with the membrane is mediated by the binding of the beta subunit to ankyrin, which in turn binds to the cytoplasmic domain of the transmembrane anion transporter (also referred to as band 3). Purified alpha and beta subunits of spectrin from the membrane of mature red blood cells will spontaneously heterodimerize, suggesting that assembly of the spectrin-actin skeleton is a simple self-assembly process, but in vivo studies with developing chicken embryo erythroid cells have indicated that assembly in vivo is more complex. We now present evidence that newly synthesized spectrin subunits in vivo or in vitro rapidly adopt one of two competing conformations, a heterodimer or a homo-oligomer. These competing reactions seem to determine the overall extent of spectrin assembled during erythroid development by determining which conformation will assemble onto the membrane-skeleton (the heterodimer) and which conformations are targeted for degradation (the homo-oligomers).