Protein Science ~2000!, 9:1594–1600. Cambridge University Press. Printed in the USA. Copyright © 2000 The Protein Society FOR THE RECORD The L6 membrane proteins—A new four-transmembrane superfamily MARK D. WRIGHT,1 JIAN NI,2 and GEORGE B. RUDY1 1 The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Post Office Royal Melbourne Hospital, 3050 Victoria, Australia 2 Human Genome Sciences, 9410 Key West Avenue, Rockville, Maryland 20850 ~Received March 20, 2000; Final Revision May 25, 2000; Accepted May 25, 2000! Abstract: L6, IL-TMP, and TM4SF5 are cell surface proteins quences clearly related to L6 ~Wice & Gordon, 1995; Muller- predicted to have four transmembrane domains. Previous se- Pilasch et al., 1998!, were also reported to be members of the quence analysis led to their assignment as members of the tet- tetraspanin superfamily. Here, we report the molecular cloning of raspanin superfamily. In this paper, we identify a new sequence a novel membrane protein L6D. Our analyses of its protein se- ~L6D! that is strikingly similar to L6, IL-TMP, and TM4SF5. quence reveal highly significant similarity to L6, IL-TMP, and Analyses of these four sequences indicate that they are not sig- TM4SF5, yet no significant homology to genuine members of the nificantly related to genuine tetraspanins, but instead constitute tetraspanin superfamily is found. Thus, we describe the novel L6 their own L6 superfamily. membrane protein superfamily, distinct from the previously de- fined tetraspanin superfamily. Keywords: L6; superfamily; tetraspanin A database containing more than one million ESTs obtained from greater than 650 different cDNA libraries has been generated by Human Genome Sciences, Inc. and The Institute for Genomic L6 is a highly expressed surface protein of human lung, breast, Research using high throughput automated DNA sequence analysis colon, and ovarian carcinomas that has excited considerable inter- of randomly selected human cDNA clones ~Adams et al., 1995!. est among tumor immunologists as a possible target for mono- Sequence homology comparisons of each EST were performed clonal antibody based cancer therapy ~Hellstrom et al., 1986a, against the GenBank database using the BLAST family of algo- 1986b; Garkavij et al., 1995; Richman et al., 1995!. Molecular rithms ~Altschul et al., 1990!. ESTs having homology to previously cloning of the L6 antigen showed it to be a surface protein with identified sequences ~probability .0.01! were collected in a data- four transmembrane domains, and initial analyses of the L6 se- base. A specific homology search using the known amino acid quence ~Marken et al., 1992! suggested that the protein was a sequence of human L6 against this database revealed several ESTs member of the tetraspanin ~or transmembrane 4! superfamily. The having greater than 30% homology. Several clones were selected tetraspanin superfamily comprises cell surface proteins character- for further investigation. The complete cDNA sequence of L6D ized by four highly conserved transmembrane domains ~Wright & was obtained from a human umbilical endothelial cell library. Tomlinson, 1994; Maecker et al., 1997!. The function of these An alignment of the deduced L6D protein sequence and the tetraspanin proteins is not currently well understood, although sev- other three L6 superfamily members, L6, IL-TMP, and TM4SF5, eral have been implicated in various signal transduction events is shown in Figure 1. For comparison, two typical tetraspanin mediating cell proliferation and activation ~Wright & Tomlinson, proteins, CD53 ~Amiot, 1990! and CD151 ~Fitter et al., 1995!, are 1994; Maecker et al., 1997!. They may also control cell motility, also included. Superficially, L6, IL-TMP, TM4SF5, and L6D do tumor cell metastasis and cellular adhesion, possibly via noncova- display a very limited resemblance to the tetraspanin superfamily. lent molecular interactions with integrins ~Hemler et al., 1996!. They share a similar topology: four transmembrane domains, short However, subsequent sequence analyses have suggested that L6 is cytoplasmic domains at their N- and C-termini, and two extracel- not a bona fide member of the tetraspanin superfamily ~Wright & lular domains, a smaller domain between transmembrane do- Tomlinson, 1994!. This issue has been further confused by the mains 1 and 2 ~TM1 and TM2!, and a larger domain between TM3 molecular cloning of the intestinal and epithelial protein IL-TMP and TM4. This proposed membrane topology has been largely ~Wice & Gordon, 1995! and the prostate cancer expressed protein confirmed by monoclonal antibody epitope mapping analyses of TM4SF5 ~Muller-Pilasch et al., 1998!. These proteins, with se- both genuine tetraspanin proteins ~Tomlinson et al., 1993! and L6 ~Edwards et al., 1995!. Reprint requests to: Dr. Mark Wright, The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute L6, IL-TMP, TM4SF5, and L6D show a striking degree of over- of Medical Research, Post Office Royal Melbourne Hospital, 3050 Victo- all identity with one another ~ranging from 38–50%!. This identity ria, Australia; e-mail: [email protected]. is distributed over the entire sequence with the only region that 1594 L6 superfamily 1595 Fig. 1. Alignment of the L6 family member sequences, L6 ~Marken et al., 1992!, IL-TMP ~Wice & Gordon, 1995!, TM4SF5 ~Muller-Pilasch et al., 1998!, and L6D; and two typical members of the tetraspanin superfamily, CD53 ~Amiot, 1990! and CD151 ~Fitter et al., 1995!. The alignment shown is a modification of that obtained using PILEUP ~Program Manual for the Wisconsin Package, Version 8, Genetics Computer Group, 575 Science Drive, Madison, Wisconsin!. Identical residues present in at least three sequences are boxed. Putative transmembrane domains are shaded. Residues strongly conserved in the tetraspanin superfamily are highlighted in the CD53 and CD151 sequences. shows a greater divergence being the C-terminal cytoplasmic do- ited similarity to those of the genuine tetraspanins ~Fig. 1!. The main. This is in stark contrast to the tetraspanin superfamily, where length ~in amino acid residues! of the transmembrane domains, transmembrane domains are very highly conserved, but cytoplas- strongly conserved among genuine tetraspanins, is clearly very mic domains and extracellular domains show a much greater de- different in the L6-like molecules. Moreover, the degree of se- gree of divergence ~Wright & Tomlinson, 1994!. It is therefore quence conservation in the transmembrane domains, comparing notable that the L6 transmembrane domains show only very lim- the L6-like molecules with the genuine tetraspanins, is not impres- 1596 M.D. Wright et al. sive. In particular, the @A0G#@F0V#LGC motif ~highlighted in peripherin ~Farrar et al., 1991!, the sarcoma-expressed molecule Fig. 1!, which is present in TM2 of all but the most divergent SAS ~Jankowski et al., 1994!, and the bladder epithelial protein tetraspanin molecules, is completely absent from the L6 superfamily. uroplakin 1B ~Yu et al., 1994!. Included in the analyses as controls The L6 proteins lack a number of other features shared by were 3 four-transmembrane proteins from superfamilies known to almost all tetraspanin proteins and also have characteristics not be unrelated to the tetraspanin superfamily: CD20 ~Tedder et al., shared with the tetraspanins. The major extracellular domain of the 1988!, the gap junction protein connexin a-1 ~Fishman et al., tetraspanins, although relatively divergent, has four highly con- 1990!, and the acetylcholine receptor a protein ~Noda et al., 1983!. served cysteine residues contained in the following motifs: CCG, It is clear from the ALIGN analyses ~Table 1! that L6, IL-TMP, PXSC, EGC ~highlighted in Fig. 1!. These four cysteines, which TM4SF5, and L6D are very closely related to one another with participate in disulphide bond formation critical to the correct align scores all greater than 18. The degree of similarity within the folding of this domain ~Oligino et al., 1988; Levy et al., 1991; “canonic” tetraspanin proteins is also apparent, as all scores within Tomlinson et al., 1993!, and the CCG motif in particular are ab- this subgroup were .7. The ability of these analyses to detect solutely conserved in sequences of bona fide tetraspanin proteins. distant evolutionary relationships is shown by the analyses of the However, the equivalent domain of the L6 superfamily proteins unusual tetraspanin proteins, RDS and Rom-1, which are particu- does not contain these four conserved cysteine residues; rather, larly similar to one another, and showed seven and five ALIGN there are two cysteine residues, neither of which occurs in the scores of .3, respectively, when aligned to other tetraspanins. In motifs found in the tetraspanins. On this point, there are CCG contrast, L6, IL-TMP, TM4SF5, and L6D showed only 1, 0, 1, and motifs which do occur in the L6, IL-TMP, and TM4SF5 sequences 1 ALIGN scores greater than three in alignments to known mem- ~but not the L6D sequence! and which have been previously high- bers of the tetraspanin superfamily. This degree of similarity is no lighted as sequence which does show homology to the tetraspanin greater than that observed for the unrelated connexin a-1 mol- superfamily ~Wice & Gordon, 1995!. However, it must be pointed ecule, which showed a surprising degree of similarity to CD53 out that these sequences do not occur in the extracellular domain. ~ALIGN score 3.69! in the total absence of similarity to any other Rather, they are in the cytoplasmic domain between TM2 and tetraspanin protein. These