No abstract

A distinctive feature of many endothelia is an abundant population of noncoated plasmalemmal vesicles, or caveolae. Caveolae have been implicated in many important cellular processes, including transcytosis, endocytosis, potocytosis, and even signal transduction. Because caveolae have not been purified from endothelial cell surfaces, little is known directly about their structure and function in the endothelium. To delineate the transport role of these caveolae, we purified them from isolated luminal endothelial plasma membranes of rat lung. The rat lung luminal endothelial cell surfaces were isolated after coating them, in situ, with positively charged colloidal silica. The caveolae were then separated from these coated membranes and purified to yield a homogeneous population of morphologically distinct vesicles enriched in the structural protein caveolin. As with caveolae found on the endothelial cell surface in vivo, these highly purified caveolae contained the plasmalemmal Ca2+-ATPase and inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate surface receptors. By contrast, other plasma membrane proteins were excluded from the caveolae, including angiotensin-converting enzyme, a8-actin, and band 4

By using an immunoisolation procedure (Stan, R.-V., W.G. Roberts, K. Ihida, D. Predescu, L. Saucan, L. Ghitescu, and G.E. Palade. 1997. Mol. Biol. Cell. 8:595–605) developed in our laboratory, we have isolated a caveolar subfraction from rat lung endothelium and we have partially characterized the proteins of this subfraction which include an apparently caveolae-specific glycoprotein we propose to call PV-1 (formerly known as gp68). The isolation and partial sequencing of PV-1, combined with the cloning of the full length PV-1 cDNA led to the following conclusions: (a) PV-1 is a novel single span type II integral membrane protein (438 amino acids long) which forms homodimers in situ; (b) the transmembrane domain of PV-1 is near the NH2 terminus defining a short cytoplasmic endodomain and a large COOH-terminal ectodomain exposed to the blood plasma; (c) PV-1 is N-glycosylated and its glycan antennae bear terminal nonreducing galactosyl residues in α1-3 linkage. PV-1 is expressed mostly in the lung but both the messenger RNA and the protein can be detected at lower levels also in kidney, spleen, liver, heart, muscle, and brain. No signal could be detected in testis and two lower molecular weight forms were detected in brain. Immunocytochemical studies carried out by immunodiffusion on rat lung with an anti–PV-1 polyclonal antibody directed against a COOH-terminal epitope reveal a specific localization of PV-1 to the stomatal diaphragms of rat lung endothelial caveolae and confirm the extracellular orientation of the PV-1 COOH terminus.