The vacuolar (H+)-ATPase: subunit arrangement and in vivo regulation

The V-ATPases are responsible for acidification of intracellular compartments and proton transport across the plasma membrane. They play an important role in both normal processes, such as membrane traffic, protein degradation, urinary acidification, and bone resorption, as well as various disease processes, such as viral infection, toxin killing, osteoporosis, and tumor metastasis. V-ATPases contain a peripheral domain (V₁) that carries out ATP hydrolysis and an integral domain (V₀) responsible for proton transport. V-ATPases operate by a rotary mechanism involving both a central rotary stalk and a peripheral stalk that serves as a stator. Cysteine-mediated cross-linking has been used to localize subunits within the V-ATPase complex and to investigate the helical interactions between subunits within the integral V₀ domain. An essential property of the V-ATPases is the ability to regulate their activity in vivo. An important mechanism of regulating V-ATPase activity is reversible dissociation of the complex into its component V₁ and V₀ domains. The dependence of reversible dissociation on subunit isoforms and cellular environment has been investigated. Qi and Wang contributed equally to this work.