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Rapid Report |
1 Centro de Estudios Científicos (CECS), Avda, Arturo Prat 514, Valdivia, Chile
2 Universidad Austral de Chile, Valdivia, Chile
| Abstract |
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(Received 24 November 2005;
accepted after revision 2 February 2006;
first published online 9 February 2006)
Corresponding author F. V. Sepúlveda: Centro de Estudios Cientificos (CECS), Av. Arturo Prat 514, Valdivia, Chile. Email: fsepulveda{at}cecs.cl
| Introduction |
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Much information about the gating of ClC channels has come from detailed studies of a Torpedo ClC-0 channel. ClC-0 was demonstrated to be a functional homodimer with the subunits forming parallel identical pores (Miller, 1982; Middleton et al. 1996; Ludewig et al. 1996). Structural data from the E. coli ClC homologue, EcClC, support the view that ClC channels are doubled-barrelled homodimers (Dutzler et al. 2002) and, despite the fact that it functions as an exchanger H+Cl (Accardi & Miller, 2004), it has provided important clues to the mechanism of ClC channel gating (Dutzler et al. 2003). In ClC-0 there is a fast gating process which controls independently the gating of each protopore (Miller, 1982). This is believed to involve the movement of a glutamate (E148 in EcClC and E166 in ClC-0) side-chain from an outermost Cl binding site in the selectivity filter thus freeing the permeation pathway (Dutzler et al. 2003). In addition, a slow gating process can open or close both ClC-0 protopores simultaneously and has been termed the common gate. The two gating processes occur independently of each other and have opposite voltage dependencies, with the slow gate being favoured by hyperpolarization and fast gates opening with positive voltages (Miller, 1982). Functional and biochemical experiments also suggested a homodimeric structure for ClC-1, the main Cl conductance of mammalian muscle (Fahlke et al. 1997; Saviane et al. 1999).
Gating of ClC-2 depends upon intra- but not extracellular Cl and neutralization of E207 (which was erroneously referred to as E207 in Niemeyer et al. (2003)), homologous to E148 in EcClC, leads to loss of sensitivity to intracellular Cl and, to a great extent, voltage. Experiments testing for transient activation by extracellular protons also demonstrated that E207 was not available for protonation in the closed channel state but became so after hyperpolarization. It was deduced that E207 is a hyperpolarization-dependent protopore gate in ClC-2 and that access of intracellular Cl to a site normally occupied by its side-chain in the pore stabilizes the open state. A remaining hyperpolarization-dependent gate was speculated to correspond to the common gating of ClC-0 (Niemeyer et al. 2003).
The presence of a slow (common) gating mechanism in ClC-2 has not been proven. ClC-2 shows low activity under resting conditions but opens slowly upon hyperpolarization. A slow gating process in ClC-2, separate from the fast gating of protopores, has been surmised from temperature dependence, Cd2+ inhibition, and mutation of a cysteine residue known to alter common gating in ClC-0 (Zúñiga et al. 2004). The complex, multiexponential activation was ascribed to opening of a common gate acting on both protopores of a double-barrelled channel, with separate, [Cl]i-dependent fast protopore gates that also respond to hyperpolarization present in parallel. Separation was, however, not clear and it was hypothesized that if present, the two processes must be rather strongly coupled in ClC-2. A similar conclusion has been reached from recent kinetic modelling of ClC-2 gating (de Santiago et al. 2005).
Recent work has investigated the role of C-terminus cystathionine ß-synthase CBS domains in controlling gating of ClC-0, -1 and -2 (Estévez et al. 2004; Niemeyer et al. 2004; Hebeisen et al. 2004; Bennetts et al. 2005). Estévez et al. demonstrated that mutating H736 present in CBS2 of ClC-0 abolished common gating and inferred a similar effect in ClC-1. As CBS domains are highly conserved between ClC channels, we have explored for evidence of a separate common gate in ClC-2 that could be obtained by mutation of this conserved (H811) residue. We demonstrate that mutating H811 in ClC-2 has a profound effect on gating and that when combined with neutralization of E207 leads to the disappearance of all gating. Kinetic separation of slow and fast gating in H811-mutated ClC-2, however, reveals that these two processes cannot be affected separately and casts doubts on their presence as independent events in ClC-2.
| Methods |
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77-86 from guinea-pig (Cid et al. 2000). Numbering corresponds to GenBank sequence no. AF113529. Mutants were generated using PCR and confirmed by sequencing. HEK-293 cells were grown and transiently transfected with expression plasmids for the various ClC-2 constructs and
H3-Cd8 to identify effectively transfected cells as previously described (Cid et al. 2000). Experiments were performed on cells in 35-mm cell culture plastic Petri dishes mounted directly on the microscope stage. The bath solution contained (mM): 140 NaCl, 2 CaCl2, 1 MgCl2, 22 sucrose and 10 Hepes, pH 7.4 adjusted with Tris. The pipette solution (35 mM Cl) contained (mM): 100 sodium gluconate, 33 CsCl, 1 MgCl2, 2 EGTA, 1Na3ATP and 10 Hepes, pH 7.4 adjusted with Tris. In the 135 mM Cl, 100 mM NaCl replaced the gluconate salt. Low Cl solutions were prepared by equimolar replacement of 130 mM NaCl by sodium gluconate. Liquid junction potentials were calculated (Barry, 1994) and corrections applied when appropriate.
Standard whole cell patch-clamp recordings were performed as described elsewhere (Díaz & Sepúlveda, 1995) using an Axopatch 200B (Axon Instruments, USA) or an EPC-7 (List, Germany) amplifier. The bath was grounded via an agar150 mM KCl bridge. Patch-clamp pipettes had resistances of 23 M
. The voltage pulse generator and analysis programs were from Axon Instruments. When giving trains of pulses, an interval of 60 s or 90 s between pulses was left at the holding potential to allow for complete current recovery. The currents generated by transfection were observed neither in untransfected cells nor in cells transfected with the
H3-Cd8 plasmid alone.
Time courses for current activation and deactivation were fitted by a double exponential plus a constant term equation as previously described (Cid et al. 2000). To estimate the apparent open probability, tail currents were obtained and their distribution as a function of voltage analysed by fitting a Boltzmann function of the form:
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The voltage dependence of fast and slow gating was resolved as follows: the open probability of the fast gate was calculated by comparing tail currents taken at 30 mV depolarizing pulses before (1Itail) and after (2Itail) a brief (10 ms) pulse to 200 mV. Assuming that the brief hyperpolarizing pulse opens the fast gate to a probability Pf= 1 (de Santiago et al. 2005), one can write Pf=1Itail/2Itail. Ps can then be derived from overall Po values, estimated as described above, as Ps=Po/Pf.
| Results |
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f whilst it produced a small but significant increase in
s. The fractional contribution of each process to deactivation was about 0.5 and did not differ between channel types (data not shown).
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The fast and slow processes described by the time constants
f and
s have been associated with the fast (protopore) and slow (common) gating processes in ClC-2 (Zúñiga et al. 2004). This view has been supported by the recent development of a model for voltage-dependent ClC-2 gating in which protopore gating is associated with the fast and very fast (instantaneous component) opening processes and common gate with the slow relaxation (de Santiago et al. 2005). On the basis of this interpretation it might be speculated that the H811A mutation is affecting both protopore and common gates in ClC-2. If this were the case, the voltage dependence of the ClC-2-H811A channel, and perhaps its [Cl]i dependence, should be altered. This was explored with the results in Fig. 2A, which shows steady-state activation curves for the H811A mutant of ClC-2 at [Cl]i of 10, 35 and 135 mM. In WT ClC-2 at [Cl]i 35 mM, significant activation takes place at potentials more negative than 50 mV, with half-maximal activation at 108 mV and slope factor of 26 mV (Niemeyer et al. 2003). In the H811A mutant there was a significant shift of the activation curve to more positive potentials (Fig. 2A, upright triangles) with respective V0.5 and slope factor values of 79 and 24 mV at [Cl]i 35 mM. At 135 and 10 mM[Cl]i activation curves were shifted in the depolarized direction and hyperpolarized direction, respectively (Fig. 2A). Slope factors were not altered by mutation compared with WT values (Fig. 2B). V0.5 values were displaced towards more positive voltage by about 35 mV in the ClC-2-H811A channels by comparison with the WT values (Fig. 2C). The slope describing the increase in V0.5 brought about by increasing [Cl]i did not differ markedly between WT and mutant ClC-2. The H811A mutation in ClC-2 therefore decreases the energy required for channel opening but does not change its [Cl]i dependence.
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| Discussion |
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Work with ClC-2ClC-2 and ClC-2ClC-0 concatamers has shown that ClC-2 forms functional homo- and heterodimers (Weinreich & Jentsch, 2001). It seems reasonable to assume that each ClC-2 monomer harbours a protopore. Evidence for a common (slow) gating process is less conclusive. Opening of ClC-2 channels is a function of voltage and can be described by a bi-exponential function with time constants that differ by around 10-fold, plus a third component too fast to resolve by exponential fit (Cid et al. 2000; Varela et al. 2002). It has been proposed that they might correspond to the equivalent fast and slow gating transitions in ClC-0 and, consequently, pertain to gating of protopores and a common gate, respectively (Zúñiga et al. 2004; de Santiago et al. 2005). It must be pointed out, however, that slow gating in ClC-0 differs in several respects from any aspect of gating in ClC-2. The common gate of ClC-0 is remarkably slow (time scale 10100 s) and highly temperature dependent (Q10
40) (Jentsch et al. 2002). The slow transition of ClC-2 is much faster (
s 0.22 s) and less temperature dependent (Q10 for
s
5, similar to that of
f (Zúñiga et al. 2004)). In ClC-0, extracellular divalent cations block by closing the common gate of ClC-0 (Chen, 1998) and mutating an extracellular-facing cysteine residue abolishes common gating and the effect of Zn2+ (Lin et al. 1999). Extracellular Cd2+ blocks ClC-2 affecting fast and slow gating processes and mutation of the conserved cysteine decreases the effect of Cd2+ but affects both types of transitions (Zúñiga et al. 2004). Finally, our present results show that mutation of a conserved CBS residue (H811A) which abolishes common gating in ClC-0, affects slow and fast transitions in ClC-2 without altering its sensitivity to extracellular Cd2+. These divergences point to the idea that whilst slow and fast voltage-dependent transitions are present in ClC-2, the equivalent of an independent slow, common gate similar to that in ClC-0 is lacking.
Our present results show that the separate and independent gating processes seen in ClC-0 are absent from ClC-2. Fast, protopore gating in ClC-2 is a property of the outermost Cl binding site in the pore involving removal of the E207 side-chain and entry of Cl into the site from the intracellular aspect of the pore. This is supported by the disappearance of Cl and most voltage dependence upon E207 neutralization, with the remaining Po dependence upon voltage resembling that of the slow gating described here and elsewhere (de Santiago et al. 2005). The disappearance of the slow-resembling gate remaining in the E207V mutant upon additional H811A CBS mutation might have led to the simple conclusion that protopore and slow gate had been hit separately. The picture is more complicated, however, as H811A mutation on its own affects slow and fast gating processes in a similar way. The position of
-helix R as deduced from the crystal structure of bacterial ClC shows that it participates in the selectivity filter and projects towards the cytoplasmatic side at its opposite end (Dutzler et al. 2002). This helix connects a central Cl coordination site within the pore with the structures in the intracellular C-terminus such as the CBS domains. It has been speculated that this might be the way in which CBS domains contribute to gating regulation (Estévez et al. 2004). Interestingly, mutation K566Q in the R helix of rat ClC-2 produces a decrease in the apparent energy to open the channel (Jordt & Jentsch, 1997), similar to what is seen here with the H811A mutant. We have postulated that hyperpolarization is required to remove the E207 side-chain from an external binding site in the pore to allow Cl occupancy (Niemeyer et al. 2003). This might require a pore conformational change as proposed for protopore gating in ClC-0 (Accardi & Pusch, 2003). It is conceivable that slow gating in ClC-2 contributes, or corresponds entirely, to this putative conformational change, perhaps exerting its effect at the central binding site of the pore through
-helix R. Whether slow gating in ClC-2 closes both pores simultaneously and the nature of the proposed coupling between its slow and fast gates (Zúñiga et al. 2004; de Santiago et al. 2005) are questions that will require further work probably involving single channel recording.
CBS domains have been proposed to regulate the activity of various proteins, including ClC channels, acting as sensors of the energy status of the cell through binding adenosine derivatives (Scott et al. 2004). It is possible that CBS domains form a continuous structure with the pore of ClC channels, allowing regulation of gating by intracellular factors. The effect of CBS domains on ClC-2 gating uncovered here by mutation might be part of a physiological mechanism.
| Supplemental material |
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This material can also be found as part of the full-text HTML version available from http://www.blackwell-synergy.com
| Footnotes |
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| Acknowledgements |
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