Localizing the chaperone activity of erythroid spectrin

Spectrin, the major protein of the RBC membrane skeleton has canonically been thought to only serve a structural function. We have described a novel chaperone-like property of spectrin and have shown that it is able to prevent the aggregation of other proteins such as alcohol dehydrogenase, insulin and free globin chains. We have tried to localize the molecular origin of chaperone-like activity in multi-domain spectrin by using recombinant spectrin fragments and investigating individual domains. We have characterized the recombinant domains using intrinsic tryptophan fluorescence and CD spectroscopy to show their identity to native spectrin. Hydrophobic ligands Prodan (6-propionyl-2[dimethylamino]-naphthalene) and ANS (1-anilinonaphthalene-8-sulfonic acid) binding has been used to probe the hydrophobicity of the recombinant domains and it is seen that all domains have surface exposed hydrophobic patches; and in accordance with our previous hypothesis only the reconstituted self-association domain binds Prodan. Recombinant domains display comparable chaperone potential in preventing protein aggregation; and substrate selectivity of -over {beta}-globin is seen. Enzyme refolding studies show alternate pathways of chaperone action. Our current study points to the presence of hydrophobic patches on the surface of these domains as the source of the chaperone activity of spectrin, as notably seen in the self-association domain. There is no one domain largely responsible for the chaperone activity of spectrin; rather all domains appear to contribute equally, such that the chaperone activity of spectrin seems to be a linear sum of the individual activities of the domains.