The cytoplasmic domain of erythrocyte membrane band 3 (cdb3) serves as a center of membrane organization, interacting with such proteins as ankyrin, protein 4.1, protein 4.2, hemoglobin, several glycolytic enzymes, a tyrosine phosphatase, and a tyrosine kinase, p72syk . The crystallographic structure of the cdb3 dimer has revealed that residues 175-185 assume a -hairpin loop similar to a putative ankyrin-binding motif at the cytoplasmic surface of the Na ؉ /K ؉ -ATPase. To test whether this hairpin loop constitutes an ankyrin-binding site on cdb3, we have deleted amino acids 175-185 and substituted the 11-residue loop with a Gly-Gly dipeptide that bridges the deletion without introducing strain into the structure. Although the deletion mutant undergoes the same native conformational changes exhibited by wild type cdb3 and binds other peripheral proteins normally, the mutant exhibits no affinity for ankyrin. This suggests that the exposed -hairpin turn indeed constitutes a major ankyrin-binding site on cdb3. Other biochemical studies suggest that ankyrin also docks at the NH 2 terminus of band 3. Thus, antibodies to the NH 2 terminus of cdb3 block ankyrin binding to the cdb3, and ankyrin binding to cdb3 prevents p72 syk phosphorylation of cdb3 at its NH 2 terminus (predominantly at Tyr-8). However, a truncation mutant of cdb3 lacking the NH 2 -terminal 50 residues displays the same binding affinity as wild type cdb3. These data thus suggest that the NH 2 terminus of cdb3 is proximal to but not required for the cdb3-ankyrin interaction.Ankyrin mediates the attachment of a diverse set of membrane spanning proteins to spectrin-based membrane skeletons. Depending on the cell type, ankyrin may bridge between the  subunit of spectrin and the anion exchanger (1), the Na ϩ /K ϩ -ATPase (2, 3), a voltage-dependent Na ϩ channel (4), or the Na ϩ /Ca 2ϩ exchanger (5). Cell adhesion molecules such as CD44 (6) and L1CAM family members (7,8), as well as calcium-release channels such as IP3 receptor (9) and ryanodine receptor (10) are also known to associate with ankyrin.Ankyrin is folded into three independent domains that include an 89-kDa NH 2 -terminal membrane-binding domain, followed by a 62-kDa spectrin-binding domain and a COOHterminal regulatory domain. The membrane-binding domain of ankyrin consists of 24 tandem repeats of a 33-amino acid motif known as the ankyrin repeat that is involved in protein recognition (11)(12)(13)(14). Because ankyrin interacts with a highly diverse group of membrane proteins, much effort has been devoted to identifying the structural features that mediate these interactions (15-18).The major linkage between the membrane bilayer and spectrin-based cortical skeleton in erythrocytes is mediated by ankyrin binding to band 3. Because previous studies (19 -22) aimed at mapping the docking site(s) of ankyrin on the cytoplasmic domain of erythrocyte membrane band 3 (cdb3) 1 were conducted without the benefit of the crystal structure of cdb3, these investigations of necessity led to inexact conc...