Neurabins are protein phosphatase-1 (PP1) targeting subunits that are highly concentrated in dendritic spines and post-synaptic densities. Immunoprecipitation of neurabin I and neurabin II/spinophilin from rat brain extracts sedimented PP1␥1 and PP1␣ but not PP1. In vitro studies showed that recombinant peptides representing central regions of neurabins also preferentially bound PP1␥1 and PP1␣ from brain extracts and associated poorly with PP1. Analysis of PP1 binding to chimeric neurabins suggested that sequences flanking a conserved PP1-binding motif altered their selectivity for PP1 and their activity as regulators of PP1 in vitro. Assays using recombinant PP1 catalytic subunits and a chimera of PP1 and protein phosphatase-2A indicated that the C-terminal sequences unique to the PP1 isoforms contributed to their recognition by neurabins. Collectively, the results from several different in vitro assays established the rank order of PP1 isoform selection by neurabins to be PP1␥1 > PP1␣ > PP1. This PP1 isoform selectivity was confirmed by immunoprecipitation of neurabin I and II from brain extracts from wild type and mutant PP1␥ null mice. In the absence of PP1␥1, both neurabins showed enhanced association with PP1␣ but not PP1. These studies identified some of the structural determinants in PP1 and neurabins that together contribute to preferential targeting of PP1␥1 and PP1␣ to the mammalian synapse.Protein phosphatase-1 (PP1), 1 a major eukaryotic protein serine/threonine phosphatase, is encoded by multiple genes in both plants and animals. Disruption of PP1 genes in fungi (1), fruit flies (2), and mice (3) suggested that PP1 isoforms encoded by individual genes control distinct but overlapping physiological functions. Three mammalian isoforms, PP1␣, PP1, and PP1␥1, are expressed in all tissues (4) with PP1␥2, an alternately spliced product of the PP1␥ gene, present predominantly in testes (5, 6). Immunocytochemistry using isoform-specific antibodies suggested that expression of PP1 isoforms varied in different brain regions where they are also localized to different subcellular compartments (6, 7). For example, PP1 was the predominant isoform associated with microtubules in the neuronal cell body, whereas PP1␥1 and PP1␣ were preferentially concentrated in dendritic spines (6,8). Furthermore, by analyzing endogenous PP1 movement during the cell cycle, Andreassen et al. (9) showed that the distribution of PP1 isoforms in cells was highly dynamic. This placed new emphasis on understanding the mechanisms that target individual PP1 isoforms to cellular organelles.Isolation of PP1 bound to skeletal muscle glycogen (10) and myosin (11) established the paradigm that regulatory or targeting subunits bound to PP1 catalytic subunits dictate the subcellular localization, substrate recognition, and hormonal control of PP1. The search for PP1 regulators that control functions as diverse as protein synthesis, gene expression, cell division, and motility has thus far yielded more than 50 PP1-binding proteins (12). Wh...