The light subunit of system bo,+ is fully functional in the absence of the heavy subunit

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Abstract
The heteromeric amino acid transporters are composed of a type II glycoprotein and a non‐glycosylated polytopic membrane protein. System bo,+ exchanges dibasic for neutral amino acids. It is composed of rBAT and bo,+AT, the latter being the polytopic membrane subunit. Mutations in either of them cause malfunction of the system, leading to cystinuria. bo,+AT‐reconstituted systems from HeLa or MDCK cells catalysed transport of arginine that was totally dependent on the presence of one of the bo,+ substrates inside the liposomes. rBAT was essential for the cell surface expression of bo,+AT, but it was not required for reconstituted bo,+AT transport activity. No system bo,+ transport was detected in liposomes derived from cells expressing rBAT alone. The reconstituted bo,+AT showed kinetic asymmetry. Expressing the cystinuria‐specific mutant A354T of bo,+AT in HeLa cells together with rBAT resulted in defective arginine uptake in whole cells, which was paralleled by the reconstituted bo,+AT activity. Thus, subunit bo,+AT by itself is sufficient to catalyse transmembrane amino acid exchange. The polytopic subunits may also be the catalytic part in other heteromeric transporters.