The most abundant and widely expressed mammalian phosphoinositide kinase activity is contributed by phosphatidylinositol 4-kinase II␣ (PI4KII␣). In this study we demonstrate that PI4KII␣ is a novel GTP-independent target of the wasp venom tetradecapeptide mastoparan and that different mechanisms of activation occur in different subcellular membranes. Following cell membrane fractionation mastoparan specifically stimulated a high activity Golgi/ endosomal pool of PI4KII␣ independently of exogenous guanine nucleotides. Conversely, GTP␥S stimulated a low activity pool of PI4KII␣ in a separable dense membrane fraction and this response was further enhanced by mastoparan. Overexpression of PI4KII␣ increased the basal phosphatidylinositol 4-kinase activity of each membrane pool, as well as the mastoparan-dependent activities, thereby demonstrating that mastoparan specifically activates this isozyme. Both mastoparan and M7, at concentrations known to invoke secretion, stimulated PI4KII␣ with similar efficacies, resulting in an increase in the apparent V max and decrease in K m for exogenously added PI. Mastoparan also stimulated PI4KII␣ immunoprecipitated from the raft fraction, indicating that PI4KII␣ is a direct target of mastoparan. Finally we reveal a striking dependence of both basal and mastoparan-stimulated PI4KII␣ activity on endogenous cholesterol concentration and therefore conclude that changes in membrane environment can regulate PI4KII␣ activity.The wasp venom peptide mastoparan stimulates signaling by G i and G 0 heterotrimeric G-proteins by enhancing the rate of dissociation of bound GDP, thereby allowing GTP to bind. Increased G i and G 0 signaling then activates a variety of cell-type-dependent events, including secretion and ion transport.However the targets of mastoparan are by no means limited to heterotrimeric G-proteins. Mastoparan is also known to affect the activity of phospholipase D2 (1), Rho (2), nucleotide diphosphate kinase (3), calmodulin (4), glycogen phosphorylase (5), phospholipase A2 (6), p67-phox (7), and the type II phosphatidylinositol 4-kinase (PI4KII) 2 (8, 9). PI4KII␣ localizes to membranes of the Golgi-endosomal system (10, 11) where it provides the phosphatidylinositol 4-phosphate (PI4P) that is required to recruit the AP-1 clathrin adaptor complex to membranes of the trans-Golgi network (TGN) (11). Two membrane fractions containing PI4KII␣ activity have been identified using sucrose density gradient ultracentrifugation (12) and found to possess differing levels of intrinsic kinase activity both in intact membranes and in immunoprecipitates prepared from detergent lysates (13). The higher activity pool is found in membranes that possess the raft-like properties of high buoyancy in sucrose density gradients and resistance to detergent solubilization (12-14). As reported by Barylko et al. (15), rafting of PI4KII␣ is likely to arise from palmitoylation of a cysteine-rich sequence within the kinase domain (residues 174 -178, CCPCC), but whether or not a particular raft lipid enviro...