N-glycosylation regulates MET processing and signaling.

MET, the receptor for the hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), is strongly associated with resistance to tyrosine kinase inhibitors, key drugs that are used in the therapy of non-small cell lung cancer. MET contains 11 potential N-glycosylation sites, but the site-specific roles of these N-glycans have not been elucidated. We report herein that these N-glycans regulate the proteolytic processing of MET and HGF-induced MET signaling, and that this regulation is site specific. Inhibitors of N-glycosylation were found to suppress the processing and trafficking of endogenous MET in H1975 and EBC-1 lung cancer cells and exogenous MET in CHO-K1 cells. We purified the recombinant extracellular domain of human MET and determined the site-specific N-glycan structures and occupancy using mass spectrometry. The results indicated that most sites were fully glycosylated and that the dominant population was the complex type. To examine the effects of the deletion of N-glycans of MET, we prepared endogenous MET knockout Flp-In CHO cells and transfected them with a series of N-glycan-deletion mutants of MET. The results showed that several N-glycans are implicated in the processing of MET. The findings also suggested that the N-glycans of the SEMA domain of MET positively regulate HGF signaling, and the N-glycans of the region other than the SEMA domain negatively regulate HGF signaling. Processing, cell surface expression, and signaling were significantly suppressed in the case of the all-N-glycan-deletion mutant. The overall findings suggest that N-glycans of MET affect the status and the function of the receptor in a site-specific manner.