Fluoride has been known as a bone-forming agent for more than 100 years. Together, the occurrence of osteosclerosis in miners exposed to a mineral consisting of sodium aluminum fluoride (Na 3 AlF 6 ), the effect of fluoridation of drinking water on bone mass in humans, as well as recent animal studies suggest that fluoride in complex with aluminum is capable of increasing bone formation (reviewed in Refs. 1 and 2). However, a narrow therapeutic window and the questionable quality of newly formed bone prevented the wide use of fluoride for the treatment of osteoporotic patients. A promising new treatment using fluoride has recently been offered in the form of slow-release sodium fluoride (reviewed in Ref. 3). Despite difficulties in its therapeutic use, fluoride remains an interesting bone anabolic agent. Understanding the molecular actions of fluoride on bone is expected to enable the development of drugs that would mimic its anabolic action and could overcome problems of the narrow therapeutic window and side effects.Little is known about the molecular mechanism of fluoride action in bone at the cellular level. Fluoride in a complex with aluminum (fluoroaluminate, most likely AlF 4 Ϫ ) (4) binds to ␣-subunits of heterotrimeric G proteins in vitro and activates G protein-mediated intracellular signaling pathways (5-8). Numerous reports indicate that in cultures of isolated primary osteoblastic cells as well as osteoblastic cell lines, fluoride and fluoroaluminate can induce proliferation (2, 9 -11), although this effect seems to be restricted to a certain population of osteoblastic cells (12). Activation of several enzymes involved in intracellular signal transduction has been implicated in mediating the mitogenic signal of fluoride (including phospholipase C, diglyceride kinase, phospholipase D, tyrosine kinases, Erk1, Erk2, and p70 S6K ) as well as the inhibition of tyrosine phosphatases and adenylate cyclase (2, 13-17).We (17) and others (2, 18) have recently reported that fluoroaluminate and fluoride increase protein tyrosine phosphorylation in osteoblast-like cells. In our system, fluoroaluminate induced prominent tyrosine phosphorylation of several proteins with apparent molecular masses of ϳ70, 120, and 130 kDa (17). However, the identity of tyrosine kinases mediating fluoroaluminate-induced tyrosine phosphorylation has remained elusive. In this study, we describe the tyrosine phosphorylation of a previously undetected 110-kDa protein in response to treatment of MC3T3-E1 cells with fluoroaluminate. The phosphorylation of this protein was weaker than the tyrosine phosphorylation of major proteins that were previously described, and its resolution from the major 120-kDa protein was critical for its detection. Furthermore, we demonstrate that this 110-kDa protein is immunologically indistinguishable from Pyk2 (proline-rich tyrosine kinase 2), a recently described tyrosine kinase shown to be