Sticholysin II: a pore-forming toxin as a probe to recognize sphingomyelin in artificial and cellular membranes

Sphingomyelin is a major component of membrane rafts, and also is a precursor of many bioactive molecules. The sphingomyelin plays important biological roles and alterations of its metabolism are the basis of some genetic disorders such as the Niemann Pick disease. A complete understanding of its biological role is frustrated by the lack of efficient tools for its recognition in the cell. Sticholysin II (StnII) is a 20 kDa protein from the sea-anemone Stichodactyla helianthus which shows a cytotoxic activity by forming oligomeric aqueous pores in the cell plasma membrane. A recent NMR analysis indicates that the sticholysin II binds specifically to sphingomyelin by two domains that recognize respectively the hydrophilic (i.e. phosphorylcholine) and the hydrophobic (i.e. ceramide) moieties of the molecule. Aim of our research has been to verify the possible employ of an antibody against the StnII to investigate the localization and the dynamics of sphingomyelin in cell membranes. For this purpose, we developed a monoclonal antibody (named A10) against the toxin and we tested its ability to bind StnII after binding to sphingomyelin. A10 antibody is able to recognize the sticholysin II both in its native form and after SDS treatment, being the protein still suitable for many analytic techniques such as ELISA, western blotting and immunofluorescence. The high affinity of the toxin for the sphingomyelin in cell membranes has been demonstrated by microscopic immuno-localization and western blot analysis; both methods confirmed that sphingomyelin is the molecular acceptor for StnII also in cell membranes. Finally, we studied the specificity of the toxin for sphingomyelin by a cell membrane-double labelling method, using cholera toxin, specific for the ganglioside GM1, and sticholysin II. The results obtained show that there is no cross-reactivity between the two toxins, confirming that sticholysin II is able to discriminate among membrane domains with sphingomyelin with respect to those enriched with gangliosides.