Open Access

Robert Ernst, Joachim Koch, Carsten Horn, Robert Tampé, Lutz Schmitt

• The human transporter associated with antigen processing (TAP) translocates antigenic peptides from the cytosol into the endoplasmic reticulum lumen. The functional unit of TAP is a heterodimer composed of the TAP1 and TAP2 subunits, both of which are members of the ABC-transporter family. ABC-transporters are ATP-dependent pumps, channels, or receptors that are composed of four modules: two nucleotide-binding domains (NBDs) and two transmembrane domains (TMDs). Although the TMDs are rather divergent in sequence, the NBDs are conserved with respect to structure and function. Interestingly, the NBD of TAP1 contains mutations at amino acid positions that have been proposed to be essential for catalytic activity. Instead of a glutamate, proposed to act as a general base, TAP1 contains an aspartate and a glutamine instead of the conserved histidine, which has been suggested to act as the linchpin. We used this degeneration to evaluate the individual contribution of these two amino acids to the ATPase activity of the engineered TAP1-NBD mutants. Based on our results a catalytic hierarchy of these two fundamental amino acids in ATP hydrolysis of the mutated TAP1 motor domain was deduced.