Tryptic digestion of the human erythrocyte glucose transporter: effects on ligand binding and tryptophan fluorescence.

The conformation of the human erythrocyte glucose transport protein has been shown to determine its susceptibility to enzymatic cleavage on a large cytoplasmic loop. We took the converse approach and investigated the effects of tryptic digestion on the conformational structure of this protein. Exhaustive tryptic digestion of protein-depleted erythrocyte ghosts decreased the affinity of the residual transporter for cytochalasin B by 3-fold but did not affect the total number of binding sites. Tryptic digestion also increased the affinity of the residual transporter for D-glucose and inward-binding sugar phenyl beta-D-glucopyranoside but decreased that for the outward-binding 4,6-O-ethylidene glucose. These results suggest that tryptic cleavage stabilized the remaining transporter in an inward-facing conformation, but one with decreased affinity for cytochalasin B. The steady-state fluorescence emission scan of the purified reconstituted glucose transport protein was unaffected by tryptic digestion. Addition of increasing concentrations of potassium iodide resulted in linear Stern-Volmer plots, which were also unaffected by prior tryptic digestion. The tryptophan oxidant N-bromosuccinimide was investigated to provide a more sensitive measure of tryptophan environment. This agent irreversibly inhibited 3-O-methylglucose transport in intact erythrocytes and cytochalasin B binding in protein-depleted ghosts, with a half-maximal effect observed for each activity at about 0.3-0.4 nM. Treatment of purified glucose transport protein with N-bromosuccinimide resulted in a time-dependent quench of tryptophan fluorescence, which was resolved into two components by nonlinear regression using global analysis. Tryptic digestion retarded the rate of oxidation of the more slowly reacting class of tryptophans. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)