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Glomerular capillary filtration barrier characteristics are determined in part by the slit-pore junctions of glomerular podocytes. Protein tyrosine phosphatase receptor-O (PTPro) is a transmembrane protein expressed on the apical surface of podocyte foot processes. Tyrosine phosphorylation of podocyte proteins including nephrin may control the filtration barrier. To determine whether PTPro activity is required to maintain glomerular macromolecular permeability, albumin permeability (Palb) was studied after incubation of glomeruli from normal animals with a series of monoclonal (mAb) and polyclonal antibodies. Reagents included mAbs to rabbit and rat PTPro and polyclonal rabbit immune IgG to rat PTPro. mAb 4C3, specific to the amino acid core of PTPro, decreased its phosphatase activity and increased Palbof rabbit glomeruli in a time- and concentration-dependent manner. In contrast, mAb P8E7 did not diminish phosphatase activity and did not alter Palb. Preincubation of 4C3 with PTPro extracellular domain fusion protein blocked glomerular binding and abolished permeability activity. In parallel experiments, Palbof rat glomeruli was increased by two mAbs (1B4 and 1D1) or by polyclonal anti-rat PTPro. We conclude that PTPro interaction with specific antibodies acutely increases Palb. The identity of the normal ligand for PTPro and of its substrate, as well as the mechanism by which phosphatase activity of this receptor affects the filtration barrier, remain to be determined.

Human glomerular epithelial protein 1 (GLEPP1), a receptor-like membrane protein tyrosine phosphatase (PTPase), was cloned and sequenced from a human renal cortical cDNA library. The human nucleotide and derived amino acid sequences were, respectively, 90 and 97% identical to those of rabbit. Human GLEPP1 is predicted to contain 1188 amino acids. The predicted mature protein is 1159 amino acids long and contains a large extracellular domain, a single transmembrane domain, and a single intracellular PTPase domain. Monoclonal and polyclonal antibodies raised against a human GLEPP1 fusion protein recognized a protein with distribution restricted to the glomerulus in human kidney and with an apparent molecular weight of approximately 200 kDa. The GLEPP1 gene was assigned to human chromosome 12p12-p13 by fluorescence in situ hybridization. Copyright 1995, 1999 Academic Press

Human renal cortex and heart cDNA libraries were screened for a human homolog of rabbit PCLP1 using the rabbit PCLP1 cDNA as a probe. Clones spanning 5869 base pairs with an open reading frame coding for a 528-amino acid peptide were obtained. The putative peptide contains a potential signal peptide and a single membrane-spanning region. The extracellular domain contains multiple potential sites for N- and O-linked glycosylation and 4 cysteines for potential disulfide bonding similar to rabbit PCLP1. On Northern blot a major transcript is seen at 5.9 kilobases. Antibodies to this protein show a doublet at 160/165 kDa on Western blots of human glomerular extract and a pattern of intense glomerular staining and vascular endothelial staining on immunofluorescence of human kidney sections. Comparison of the rabbit and human peptide sequences shows a high degree of identity in the transmembrane and intracellular domains (96%) with a lower degree of identity in the extracellular domain (36%). An antibody to the intracellular domain reacted across species (human, rabbit, and rat) and recognized both rabbit PCLP1 and rat podocalyxin. An interspecies Southern blot probed with a cDNA coding for the intracellular domain showed strong hybridization to all vertebrates tested in a pattern suggesting a single copy gene. We conclude that this cDNA and putative peptide represent the human homolog of rabbit PCLP1 and rat podocalyxin.