Role of the membrane anchor in the regulation of Lck activity

Theoretical work suggests that collective spatiotemporal behavior of integral membrane proteins should be modulated by boundary lipids sheathing their membrane anchors. Here, we show evidence for this prediction while investigating the mechanism for maintaining a steady amount of the active form of integral membrane protein Lck kinase (Lck(A)) by Lck trans-autophosphorylation regulated by the phosphatase CD45. We used super-resolution microscopy, flow cytometry, and pharmacological and genetic perturbation to gain insight into the spatiotemporal context of this process. We found that Lck(A) is generated exclusively at the plasma membrane, where CD45 maintains it in a ceaseless dynamic equilibrium with its unphosphorylated precursor. Steady Lck(A) shows linear dependence, after an initial threshold, over a considerable range of Lck expression levels. This behavior fits a phenomenological model of trans-autophosphorylation that becomes more efficient with increasing Lck(A). We then challenged steady Lck(A) formation by genetically swapping the Lck membrane anchor with structurally divergent ones, such as that of Src or the transmembrane domains of LAT, CD4, palmitoylation-defective CD4 and CD45 that were expected to drastically modify Lck boundary lipids. We observed small but significant changes in Lck(A) generation, except for the CD45 transmembrane domain that drastically reduced Lck(A) due to its excessive lateral proximity to CD45. Comprehensively, Lck(A) formation and maintenance can be best explained by lipid bilayer critical density fluctuations rather than liquid-ordered phase-separated nanodomains, as previously thought, with “like/unlike” boundary lipids driving dynamical proximity and remoteness of Lck with itself and with CD45.