Soluble form of Lamp II in purified rat liver lysosomes

Lamp II (for lysosomal associated membrane protein II) is an integral type I glycoprotein. It consists of a very large and heavily glycosylated luminal domain, a single transmembrane segment, and a short cytoplasmic tail. We show that in highly purified lysosomes from rat liver, Lamp II, immunodetected with a monoclonal antibody on Western blots, is surprisingly distributed between a membrane bound form and a ''soluble'' form. The partition of the protein between the membrane and the content of lysosomes is strongly pH dependent. The soluble Lamp II population is sensitive to pH dependent aggregation as it is for many lysosomal content enzymes. (C) 1996 Academic Press, Inc.