Abstract

Several members of the CLC family are secondary active anion/proton exchangers, and not passive chloride channels. Among the exchangers, the endosomal ClC-5 protein that is mutated in Dent's disease shows an extreme outward rectification that precludes a precise determination of its transport stoichiometry from measurements of the reversal potential. We developed a novel imaging method to determine the absolute proton flux in Xenopus oocytes from the extracellular proton gradient. We determined a transport stoichiometry of 2 Cl^-/1 H⁺. Nitrate uncoupled proton transport but mutating the highly conserved serine 168 to proline, as found in the plant NO₃^-/H⁺ antiporter atClCa, led to coupled NO₃^-/H⁺ exchange. Among several amino acids tested at position 168, S168P was unique in mediating highly coupled NO₃^-/H⁺ exchange. We further found that ClC-5 is strongly stimulated by intracellular protons in an allosteric manner with an apparent pK of 7.2. A 2:1 stoichiometry appears to be a general property of CLC anion/proton exchangers. Serine 168 has an important function in determining anionic specificity of the exchange mechanism.