Binding of calcium ions to Ras promotes Ras guanine nucleotide exchange under emulated physiological conditions

Both Ras protein and calcium play significant roles in various cellular processes via complex signaling transduction networks. However, it is not well understood whether and how Ca2+ can directly regulate Ras function. Here we demonstrate by isothermal titration calorimetry that Ca2+ directly binds to the H-Ras·GDP·Mg2+ complex with moderate affinity at the first binding site followed by two weak binding events. The results from limited proteinase degradation show that Ca2+ protects the fragments of H-Ras from being further degraded by trypsin and by proteinase K. HPLC studies together with fluorescence spectroscopic measurements indicate that binding of Ca2+ to the H-Ras·GDP·Mg2+ complex remarkably promotes guanine nucleotide exchange on H-Ras under emulated physiological Ca2+ concentration conditions. Addition of high concentrations of either of two macromolecular crowding agents, Ficoll 70 and dextran 70, dramatically enhances H-Ras guanine nucleotide exchange extent in the presence of Ca2+ at emulated physiological concentrations, and the nucleotide exchange extent increases significantly with the concentrations of crowding agents. Together, these results indicate that binding of calcium ions to H-Ras remarkably promotes H-Ras guanine nucleotide exchange under emulated physiological conditions. We thus propose that Ca2+ may activate Ras signaling pathway by interaction with Ras, providing clues to understand the role of calcium in regulating Ras function in physiological environments.