CD38 catalyzes not only the formation of cyclic ADPribose (cADPR) from NAD؉ but also the hydrolysis of cADPR to ADP-ribose (ADPR), and ATP inhibits the hydrolysis (Takasawa, S., Tohgo, A., Noguchi, N., Koguma, T., Nata, K., Sugimoto, T., Yonekura, H., and Okamoto, H. (1993) J. Biol. Chem. 268, 26052-26054). In the present study, using purified recombinant CD38, we showed that the cADPR hydrolase activity of CD38 was inhibited by ATP in a competitive manner with cADPR. To identify the binding site for ATP and/or cADPR, we labeled the purified CD38 with FSBA. Sequence analysis of the lysylendopeptidase-digested fragment of the labeled CD38 indicated that the FSBA-labeled residue was Lys-129. We introduced site-directed mutations to change the Lys-129 of CD38 to Ala and to Arg. Neither mutant was labeled with FSBA nor catalyzed the hydrolysis of cADPR to ADPR. Furthermore, the mutants did not bind cADPR, whereas they still used NAD ؉ as a substrate to form cADPR and ADPR. These results indicate that Lys-129 of CD38 participates in cADPR binding and that ATP competes with cADPR for the binding site, resulting in the inhibition of the cADPR hydrolase activity of CD38.Cyclic ADP-ribose (cADPR) 1 (1) induces the release of Ca 2ϩ from microsomes in a variety of tissues and cells including pancreatic  cells (2-10). cADPR is synthesized from NAD ϩ by ADP-ribosyl cyclase, which was purified as a soluble 29-kDa protein from Aplysia ovotestes (11-13). The amino acid sequences of Aplysia ADP-ribosyl cyclases (14, 15) showed a high degree of homology with that of CD38 (16, 17), which was reported to be a surface antigen of human lymphocytes (18). From the experiments in which CD38 cDNA was expressed in mammalian cells, CD38 was shown to catalyze not only the formation of cADPR from NAD ϩ but also the hydrolysis of cADPR to ADP-ribose (ADPR) (19 -21). We have demonstrated that ATP inhibited the hydrolysis, resulting in the accumulation of cADPR (19). Furthermore, we produced transgenic mice overexpressing human CD38 in pancreatic  cells and demonstrated that ATP, produced in the process of glucose metabolism, increased the accumulation of cADPR to enhance the Ca 2ϩ mobilization from the intracellular stores for insulin secretion in the transgenic islets (22).In the present study, we expressed human CD38 in Escherichia coli and purified it to homogeneity. Using the purified CD38, we found that Lys-129 of CD38 participated in cADPR binding and that ATP competed with cADPR for the binding site, resulting in the inhibition of the cADPR hydrolase activity of CD38.
EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURESPurification of Soluble CD38 -We isolated a CD38 cDNA from an insulinoma of a Japanese patient by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (PCR) (19) and used it for functional analyses of CD38 (17,19,22). The cDNA sequence was exactly the same as the CD38 sequence reported by Jackson and Bell (18) except for two base substitutions (nucleotide 213, A 3 C, and nucleotide 215, C 3 A) (19). The substitutions were also found in the corresponding...