The Syk tyrosine kinase family plays an essential role in immunoreceptor tyrosine-based activation motif (ITAM) signaling. The binding of Syk to tyrosine-phosphorylated ITAM subunits of immunoreceptors, such as Fc⑀RI on mast cells, results in a conformational change, with an increase of enzymatic activity of Syk. This conformational change exposes the COOH-terminal tail of Syk, which has three conserved Tyr residues (Tyr-623, Tyr-624, and Tyr-625 of rat Syk). To understand the role of these residues in signaling, wild-type and mutant Syk with these three Tyr mutated to Phe was expressed in Syk-deficient mast cells. There was decreased Fc⑀RI-induced degranulation, nuclear factor for T cell activation and NFB activation with the mutated Syk together with reduced phosphorylation of MAP kinases p38 and p42/44 ERK. In non-stimulated cells, the mutated Syk was more tyrosine phosphorylated predominantly as a result of autophosphorylation. In vitro, there was reduced binding of mutated Syk to phosphorylated ITAM due to this increased phosphorylation. This mutated Syk from non-stimulated cells had significantly reduced kinase activity toward an exogenous substrate, whereas its autophosphorylation capacity was not affected. However, the kinase activity and the autophosphorylation capacity of this mutated Syk were dramatically decreased when the protein was dephosphorylated before the in vitro kinase reaction. Furthermore, mutation of these tyrosines in the COOH-terminal region of Syk transforms it to an enzyme, similar to its homolog ZAP-70, which depends on other tyrosine kinases for optimal activation. In testing Syk mutated singly at each one of the tyrosines, Tyr-624 but especially Tyr-625 had the major role in these reactions. Therefore, these results indicate that these tyrosines in the tail region play a critical role in regulating the kinase activity and function of Syk.Syk and ZAP-70 are members of a tyrosine kinase family one or both of which are expressed in most hematopoietic cells (1-5). Structurally Syk/ZAP-70 consists of two Src-homology 2 domains (SH2) 3 and a kinase domain followed by a short COOH-terminal extension (tail). The inter-SH2 domain is located between the NH 2 -terminal SH2 (SH2-N) and COOHterminal SH2 (SH2-C), whereas the linker region is between the SH2-C and the kinase domains (6, 7). An alternatively spliced form of Syk, termed SykB, lacks a 23-amino acid sequence in the linker domain (8). Although both isoforms are expressed in immune cells such as the RBL-2H3 rat mast cell line, Syk is more efficient than SykB in immunoreceptor signaling (8,9). Syk is expressed in B cells, mast cells, immature T cells, and platelets, whereas ZAP-70 is in T cells and natural killer cells (3, 10). Syk and ZAP-70 are essential for signal transduction from cell surface immunoreceptors (10 -12). These receptors on many hematopoietic cells such as T, B, and mast cells have subunits, which contain a sequence named the immunoreceptor tyrosine-based activation motif (ITAM) which contains two tyrosine residues (13...