Kinetic mechanism and inhibitor characterization of WNK1 kinase

Pseudohypoaldosteronism type II (PHAII) is caused by the mutation of two members of the WNK (with-no-K[Lys] kinase) kinase family. We describe here the development of an in vitro WNK1 microfluidic mobility shift assay for kinetic mechanism studies. Assays using capillary electrophoresis on a microfluidic chip are suitable for both compound selection and mechanistic studies, because of the robustness of this method, as well as its high-throughput feature and insensitivity to the ATP concentration. Double-reciprocal plots of the initial rates versus the concentration of the substrate revealed that the random sequential activity of WNK catalyzed OXSR1 (oxidative stress response kinase-1) phosphorylation. WNK1 inhibitors were then found from among 86 kinases in a commercially available library. Interestingly, the Hck, Lck, and Src inhibitors, PP1 and PP2, exhibited positive inhibition against WNK1. The inhibition mode of PP1 was analyzed to be pure ATP competition with a K(i) value of 12.7 microM, showing noncompetitive inhibition against the OXSR1 peptide. From the structure-based comparison, we found that, since the WNK1 enzymes are categorized as STEs (homologues of yeast Sterile 7, Sterile 11, and Sterile 20 kinases) and Hck belongs to the TK (tyrosine kinase) family on the basis of the results of the Human Kinome Project, the residues at the catalytic site of the WNK1 that interact with PP1 were well-conserved in Hck. We concluded that the compound-based structural alignment enabled us to find interesting relationships among the kinases. This information helps us to screen specific WNK1 therapeutic reagents with no inhibition of the Src, Hck, and Lck kinases for the treatment of hypertension.