Functional and physical interactions between partial molecules of STE6, a yeast ATP-binding cassette protein

The Saccharomyces cerevisiae a-factor transporter, STE6, is a member of the ATP binding cassette (ABC) transporter superfamily. ABC proteins consist of four modular units that comprise two membrane-spanning domains (MSDs) and two nucleotide-binding domains (NBDs). Like many ABC proteins, STE6 contains these four domains in a single polypeptide; certain other ABC proteins are encoded as pairs of 'half-molecules' or are further subdivided. Our previous studies demonstrated that STE6 can be expressed as two half-molecules that are functional when co-expressed. Here we dissect the interactions between modules of STE6 in greater detail. We show by co-immunoprecipitation that STE6 half-molecules interact physically, supporting the view that they co- assemble in vivo to form a functional transporter. We also demonstrate a physical interaction between a STE6 half-molecule and full-length STE6; such complexes appear to be functional, based on the striking finding that the defective activity of full-length STE6 mutated in one of its NBDs can be corrected by co-expression of the corresponding 'wild-type' half-molecule. We also show that a quarter-molecule consisting solely of the N-terminal MSD of STE6 can interact physically and functionally with a C-terminal three- quarter molecule of STE6, indicating that information directing the assembly of STE6 from partial molecules is contained, at least in part, within its membrane spans.