The SH3 domain of amphiphysin binds the proline-rich domain of dynamin at a single site that defines a new SH3 binding consensus sequence.

Amphiphysin is an SH3 domain-containing neuronal protein that is highly concentrated in nerve terminals where it interacts via its SH3 domain with dynamin I, a GTPase implicated in synaptic vesicle endocytosis. We show here that the SH3 domain of amphiphysin, but not a mutant SH3 domain, bound with high affinity to a single site in the long proline-rich region of human dynamin I, that this site was distinct from the binding sites for other SH3 domains, and that the mutation of two adjacent amino acids in dynamin I was sufficient to abolish binding. The dynamin I sequence critically required for amphiphysin binding (PSRPNR) fits in the novel SH3 binding consensus identified for the SH3 domain of amphiphysin via a combinatorial peptide library approach: PXRPXR(H)R(H). Our data demonstrate that the long proline-rich stretch present in dynamin I contained multiple SH3 domain binding sites that recognize interacting proteins with high specificity.