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Blood, 1 September 2008, Vol. 112, No. 5, pp. 2055-2061. Prepublished online as a Blood First Edition Paper on June 17, 2008; DOI 10.1182/blood-2008-04-150276.
RED CELLS A novel loss-of-function mutation in the proton-coupled folate transporter from a patient with hereditary folate malabsorption reveals that Arg 113 is crucial for function1 The Fred Wyszkowski Cancer Research Laboratory, Department of Biology, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel; 2 Department of Child Neurology, Schneider Children's Medical Center of Israel, Petach Tikva, Israel; 3 Department of Medicine, C. Sheba Medical Center, Tel-Hashomer, Israel; 4 Laboratory for Immunology and Hematology Research, Rabin Medical Center, Hasharon Hospital, Petach Tikva, Israel; 5 General Health Services, Pediatric Primary Care, Jatt, Israel; 6 Bioinformatics Knowledge Unit, The Lorry I. Lokey Interdisciplinary, Center for Life Sciences and Engineering, Technion, Haifa, Israel; and 7 Department of Rheumatology, VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Hereditary folate malabsorption (HFM) patients harbor inactivating mutations including R113S in the proton-coupled folate transporter (PCFT), an intestinal folate transporter with optimal activity at acidic pH. Here we identified and characterized a novel R113C mutation residing in the highly conserved first intracellular loop of PCFT. Stable transfectants overexpressing a Myc-tagged wild-type (WT) and mutant R113C PCFT displayed similar transporter targeting to the plasma membrane. However, whereas WT PCFT transfectants showed a 22-fold increase in [3H]folic acid influx at pH 5.5, R113C or mock transfectants showed no increase. Moreover, WT PCFT transfectants displayed a 50% folic acid growth requirement concentration of 7 nM, whereas mock and R113C transfectants revealed 24- to 27-fold higher values. Consistently, upon fluorescein-methotrexate labeling, WT PCFT transfectants displayed a 50% methotrexate displacement concentration of 50 nM, whereas mock and R113C transfectants exhibited 12- to 14-fold higher values. Based on the crystal structure of the homologous Escherichia coli glycerol-3-phosphate transporter, we propose that the cationic R113 residue of PCFT is embedded in a hydrophobic pocket formed by several transmembrane helices that may be part of a folate translocation pore. These findings establish a novel loss of function mutation in HFM residing in an intracellular loop of PCFT crucial for folate transport.
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