Role of the Thrombin Receptor's Cytoplasmic Tail in Intracellular Trafficking

The G protein-coupled thrombin receptor is activated by an irreversible proteolytic mechanism and, perhaps as a result, exhibits an unusual trafficking pattern in the cell. Naive receptors tonically cycle between the cell surface and a protected intracellular pool, whereas receptors cleaved and activated at the cell surface internalize and move to lysosomes. Toward understanding how these trafficking events are regulated, we examined a series of receptor mutants. A receptor with alanine substitutions at all potential phosphorylation sites in the cytoplasmic tail failed to display agonist-triggered internalization but, like wild type receptor, displayed robust signaling, tonic cycling, and localization to both the cell surface and an intracellular pool. A truncation mutant that lacked most of the cytoplasmic tail also signaled robustly, lacked phosphorylation, and was defective in agonist-triggered internalization. However, in contrast to the specific phosphorylation site mutant, the truncation mutant did not display tonic cycling and localized exclusively to the cell surface. An analysis of a series of truncation mutants localized residues important for receptor trafficking to a 10-amino acid stretch in its cytoplasmic tail. These data suggest that phosphorylation may trigger internalization of activated thrombin receptors but that a second phosphorylation-independent signal mediates tonic internalization of naive receptors. They further suggest that maintenance of the intracellular pool of naive thrombin receptors requires tonic receptor internalization.