The formation of small vesicles is mediated by cytoplasmic coats the assembly of which is regulated by the activity of GTPases, kinases, and phosphatases. A heterotetrameric AP-3 adaptor complex has been implicated in the formation of synaptic vesicles from PC12 endosomes . When the small GTPase ARF1 is prevented from hydrolyzing GTP, we can reconstitute AP-3 recruitment to synaptic vesicle membranes in an assembly reaction that requires temperatures above 15°C and the presence of ATP suggesting that an enzymatic step is involved in the coat assembly. We have now found an enzymatic reaction, the phosphorylation of the AP-3 adaptor complex, that is linked with synaptic vesicle coating. Phosphorylation occurs in the 3 subunit of the complex by a kinase similar to casein kinase 1␣. The kinase copurifies with neuronal-specific AP-3. In vitro, purified casein kinase I selectively phosphorylates the 3A and 3B subunit at its hinge domain. Inhibiting the kinase hinders the recruitment of AP-3 to synaptic vesicles. The same inhibitors that prevent coat assembly in vitro also inhibit the formation of synaptic vesicles in PC12 cells. The data suggest, therefore, that the mechanism of AP-3-mediated vesiculation from neuroendocrine endosomes requires the phosphorylation of the adaptor complex at a step during or after AP-3 recruitment to membranes.
INTRODUCTIONMembrane proteins are carried from donor membranes to acceptor membranes by two steps, the vesiculation of a carrier vesicle from the donor and the fusion of the carrier vesicle with the acceptor. Vesiculation of the donor membrane can itself be divided into five steps: recognition of cargo proteins; recruitment of coating molecules; the imposition of curvature on the forming vesicle membrane; fission of the carrier vesicle from the donor membrane; and, finally, the loss of the vesicle coat (Springer et al., 1999). To discover the molecular events that take place at each step, several laboratories have reconstituted either the entire process of vesiculation or individual steps in vitro.The first two steps of vesiculation, cargo recognition and coating, can be regulated by phosphorylation. Membrane proteins are recognized as cargo because they contain sorting domains. Adaptors interact with a tyrosine or a dileucine motif (Schmid, 1997;Kirchhausen et al., 1997;Bonifacino and Dell'Angelica, 1999). The recognition of cargo molecules can be regulated by the phosphorylation of sites close to the sorting domains; for example, in the trafficking of furin (Wan et al., 1998;Teuchert et al., 1999;Molloy et al., 1999), CD4 (Pitcher et al., 1999), CTLA-4 (Shiratori et al., 1997), MHC-II-Ii complex (Anderson and Roche, 1998), and pIgAR (Casanova et al., 1990;Okamoto et al., 1994;Luton et al., 1998). The cargo molecules are recruited into a newly forming carrier vesicle by cytoplasmic coat molecules (Matsuoka et al., 1998;Bremser et al., 1999). The recruitment of two of the known coats, COPI and COPII, is regulated by small ARF-like GTPases and appears to be a relatively simple p...