Summary
We have recently shown that the NH2-terminal fragment (PrP23-110) of the human cellular prion protein (PrPc) stimulates
t-PA mediated plasminogen activation. PrP23-110 contains an N-terminal lysine cluster
(LC1; K23, K24, K27) and a C-terminal one (LC2; K101, K104, K106, K110). To study their biological function we have substituted all lysine residues of each
cluster by alanine and generated the recombinant PrP proteins PrP23110sLC1 and PrP23-110sLC2.
The ability of the mutant proteins to stimulate plasminogen activation was assayed.
We found that both lysine clusters are essential for t-PA mediated plasminogen activation.
We further studied the binding of soluble PrP23110 to immobilized t-PA or plasminogen
using surface plasmon resonance. The recorded binding curves could not be modeled
by classical 1:1 binding kinetics suggesting oligomerisation of PrP23-110. Further
plasmon resonance studies show that indeed PrP23-110 binds to itself and that glycosaminoglycans
modify this interaction. Binding of t-PA or plasminogen to PrP23-110 was no longer
influenced by glycosaminoglycans when PrP23-110 was immobilized on the chip surface.
Thus a possible role of heparin as a cofactor in the stimulation of plasminogen activation
by t-PA could be the generation of a PrP23-110 form with both lysine clusters accessible
for binding of t-PA and plasminogen.
Keywords
Plasminogen activators - proteolysis/pericellular - heparins/glycosaminoglycans -
protein function/activity