Summary
The Ig-ITIM superfamily member, PECAM-1 acts as a negative regulator of ITAM-signalling
pathways in platelets involving GPVI/FcR gamma chain and FcγRIIa. This negative feedback
loop involves regulation of collagen and GPVI-dependent aggregation events, platelet-thrombus-growth
on immobilised collagen under flow and FcγRIIa-mediated platelet responses. In this
study, we show that PECAM-1 is selectively palmitoylated involving a thioester linkage
with an unpaired cysteine residue at amino acid position 595 in its cytoplasmic domain.
As palmitoylation is known to target proteins to membrane microdomains, we investigated
the microdomain localisation for PECAM-1 in platelets and nucleated cells. In unstimulated
platelets, ∼20% of PECAM-1 is localised toTriton-insoluble microdomain fractions and
it does not increase with platelet activation by collagen, collagen-related peptide,
thrombin-or human-aggregated IgG. PECAM-1 is in close physical proximity with GPVI
in platelet microdomains. Removal of platelet cytoskeleton prior to sucrose-density-gradient
separation showed that PECAM-1 was associated with both theTriton-soluble and membrane
skeleton in microdomain-associated fractions. Disruption of microdomains by membrane-cholesterol
depletion resulted in loss of PECAM-1 localisation to membrane microdomains. Mutational
analysis of juxtamembrane cysteine residue to alanine (C595A) of human PECAM-1 resulted
in loss of palmitoylation and a sixfold decrease in association with membrane microdomains.
Functionally, the palmitoylated cysteine 595 residue is required, in part, for efficient
PECAM-1-mediated cytoprotection. These results show that cysteine 595 is required
for constitutive association of PECAM-1 with membrane microdomains and PECAM-1-mediated
cytoprotection, where it may act as a crucial regulator of signaling and apoptosis
events.
Keywords
Adhesion receptors - signal transduction - platelet physiology - lipid rafts - GP
VI