Phosphorylation of erythropoietin receptors in the endoplasmic reticulum by pervanadate-mediated inhibition of tyrosine phosphatases

Erythropoietin (EPO) is the major hormone regulating the proliferation of erythroid precursors and their differentiation into erythrocytes. Ligand binding to the erythropoietin receptor (EPO-R), a member of the cytokine receptor family, triggers Tyr phosphorylation of the surface form of the receptor, presumably mediated by the Janus kinase (JAK) 2. To study whether non-surface EPO-R can be phosphorylated, Ba/F3 cells stably transfected with EPO-R were treated with pervanadate (PV), which is widely used as a potent tool to inhibit cellular protein Tyr phosphatases, thus resulting in enhanced Tyr phosphorylation of cellular proteins. PV treatment caused the EPO-R to undergo Tyr phosphorylation in a time-dependent and dose-dependent manner. PV-mediated Tyr phosphorylation of EPO-R occurred at several intracellular sites including the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), because both endoglycosidase H (endo H)-resistant EPO-R and the ER-retained EPO-R mutant (ΔWS1 EPO-R) were Tyr phosphorylated in response to PV. Moreover, in metabolic labelling experiments, endo H-sensitive EPO-R was also phosphorylated. The phosphorylated fraction accounted for only 30-50% of the newly synthesized EPO-R, the fraction that normally exits from the ER. Tyr phosphorylation could not be detected on proteolytic fragments of the EPO-R, suggesting that this is a highly regulated process. Unlike the wild-type (wt) EPO-R, which was phosphorylated both on EPO binding and after inhibition of Tyr phosphatases by PV treatment, an EPO-R mutant (W282R EPO-R) that does not activate JAK2 was phosphorylated after PV treatment but not by EPO binding. Both EPO-R and JAK2 were phosphorylated with similar kinetics by PV treatment, suggesting that JAK2, as well as protein Tyr kinases different from JAK2, might mediate PV-dependent EPO-R phosphorylation. Furthermore the Tyr-phosphorylated ER-retained EPO-R mutant ΔWS1 co-immunoprecipitated with JAK2 kinase, indicating that the EPO-R might interact with JAK2 while in the ER.