Functional rat or human asialoglycoprotein receptors (ASGP-Rs) are hetero-oligomeric integral membrane glycoproteins. Rat ASGP-R contains three subunits, designated rat hepatic lectins (RHL) 1, 2, and 3; human ASGP-R contains two subunits, HHL1 and HHL2. The hepatic asialoglycoprotein receptor (ASGP-R) 1 has been a good model system for studying receptor-mediated endocytosis (1, 2). ASGP-Rs mediate the endocytosis of plasma glycoconjugates containing terminal galactosyl or N-acetylgalactosaminyl residues through a coated pit pathway. The receptorligand complexes are rapidly endocytosed and dissociated within endosomes. Dissociated ligands are delivered to lysosomes for degradation, and receptors are recycled back to the cell surface. Previous studies by us (2-4) and others (5-7) have demonstrated that ligands are endocytosed and intracellularly processed via two distinct pathways by two functionally distinct receptor populations, designated State 1 ASGP-Rs and State 2 ASGP-Rs (4).That State 2 ASGP-Rs undergo a transient inactivation/ reactivation cycle during receptor recycling indicates that regulation of receptor activity may be an important, and perhaps general, characteristic during endocytosis and receptor recycling (8 -10). In permeable rat hepatocytes, this State 2 receptor population is inactivated by ATP in the absence of cytosol (9), and the ATP-inactivated receptors can be quantitatively reactivated by the simple addition of palmitoyl-CoA (10, 11). Recently, we showed in both rat hepatocytes (12, 13) and human hepatoma cells (14) that State 2 ASGP-Rs are palmitoylated and that depalmitoylation with hydroxylamine causes inactivation of this same receptor population. We proposed that a dynamic fatty acylation/deacylation cycle may be the molecular basis for the State 2 ASGP-R inactivation/reactivation cycle in vivo (12,14).Physiologically, this receptor inactivation/reactivation cycle during endocytosis could explain why endocytosis mediated by a variety of recycling receptors is so efficient (2). Receptor inactivation shortly after internalization would eliminate the possibility of dissociated ligand rebinding to receptors during the segregation step in which the two are being separated and directed to different intracellular pathways. Transient receptor inactivation also ensures that the efficiency of the segregation process would not decrease as the extracellular ligand concentration (and presumably the need for efficient clearance) increased.The rat ASGP-R is an integral transmembrane glycoprotein composed of three polypeptide subunits, designated rat hepatic lectin (RHL) 1, 2, and 3, with molecular masses of 41.5, 49, and 54 kDa, respectively. The three subunits are the products of two different genes (15). RHL2 and RHL3 contain the same polypeptide backbone but differ in the type and extent of posttranslational carbohydrate modification (16). The human ASGP-R contains two subunits designated HHL1 and HHL2, also encoded by two genes (1). Each RHL and HHL subunit contains a single conserved Cys in i...