Caloxin: a novel plasma membrane Ca2+pump inhibitor

Abstract

Plasma membrane (PM) Ca2+pump is a Ca2+-Mg2+-ATPase that expels Ca2+from cells to help them maintain low concentrations of cytosolic Ca2+. There are no known extracellularly acting PM Ca2+pump inhibitors, as digoxin and ouabain are for Na+pump. In analogy with digoxin, we define caloxins as extracellular PM Ca2+pump inhibitors and describe caloxin 2A1. Caloxin 2A1 is a peptide obtained by screening a random peptide phage display library for binding to the second extracellular domain (residues 401–413) sequence of PM Ca2+pump isoform 1b. Caloxin 2A1 inhibits Ca2+-Mg2+-ATPase in human erythrocyte leaky ghosts, but it does not affect basal Mg2+-ATPase or Na+-K+-ATPase in the ghosts or Ca2+-Mg2+-ATPase in the skeletal muscle sarcoplasmic reticulum. Caloxin 2A1 also inhibits Ca2+-dependent formation of the 140-kDa acid-stable acylphosphate, which is a partial reaction of this enzyme. Consistent with inhibition of the PM Ca2+pump in vascular endothelium, caloxin 2A1 produces an endothelium-dependent relaxation that is reversed by NG-nitro-l-arginine methyl ester. Thus caloxin 2A1 is a novel PM Ca2+pump inhibitor selected for binding to an extracellular domain.