Substrate-specific modulation of Src-mediated phosphorylation of Ras and caseins by sphingosines and other substrate modulators.

It is important for the understanding of protein kinase action to differentiate between regulation at the enzyme and at the substrate levels. For example, the inhibitors dinitrophenol-tyrosine and tyrphostins act at the enzyme level to inhibit phosphorylation of all substrates by c-Src and v-Src kinases. In contrast, polylysine acts at the substrate level to stimulate Src-mediated phosphorylation of beta-casein but to inhibit phosphorylation of alpha-casein. Here we demonstrate novel enzyme-specific and substrate-specific modulations of Src kinase activity of potential physiological significance. At the enzyme level, we observed that c-Src kinase preferentially phosphorylates alpha-casein, while the v-Src kinase prefers beta-casein. At the substrate level we observed substrate-specific modulation by physiological factors including sphingosine, sphingosine derivatives and the ganglioside GM3. Galactosyl-sphingosine (psychosine) was more effective in stimulating phosphorylation of beta-casein and poly(E1A1Y1) than sphingosine. Glucosyl- and lactosyl-sphingosine were ineffective. Rat was extensively phosphorylated by c-Src in the presence of polylysine, and to a lesser extent in the sphingosine and galactosyl-sphingosine. These unexpected differences point out another potential mechanism for regulation of c-Src and v-Src kinase activities and may help to explain some of the pleotyptic manifestations of protein tyrosine kinase actions.

Combinatorial liquid-phase synthesis of

A new method for the synthesis of [1,4]oxazepin-7-ones from readily available aldehydes and alpha-amino alcohols was developed using the Baylis-Hillman reaction as the key step. To determine the scope and limitations of the method, a mixture library was synthesized from six aldehydes and six alpha-amino alcohols on the soluble polymer support poly(ethylene glycol) 5000 monomethyl ether (MeOPEG) via split synthesis and analyzed by GC-EIMS. Those oxazepines that were formed predominantly were resynthesized in a parallel synthesis and fully characterized. Thus, we have shown that split synthesis on MeOPEG can be an efficient method to rapidly screen the substrate spectrum of a newly developed reaction sequence.