1 Palmitoylation of MICA, a ligand for NKG2D, mediates its recruitment to membrane microdomains and promotes its shedding S. Agüera-González 1,2 , C.C. Gross 3,4 , L. Fernández-Messina 1,6 , O. Ashiru 1 , G. Esteso 6 , H.C. Hang 5 , H.T. Reyburn 6 , E.O. Long 3 and M. Valés-Gómez 1,6,7 Running title: Palmitoylation of MICA promotes its shedding Keywords: palmitoylation, NKG2D, MHC-class I-related Chain A, NK cell 1 Division of Immunology, Department of Pathology, University of Cambridge, Tennis Court Road, Cambridge CB2 1QP, UK 2 Current address: Institut Pasteur, Lymphocyte Cell Biology Unit, Department of Immunology, Paris, F-75724, France. 3 Laboratory of Immunogenetics, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Rockville, MD 20852, USA. 4 Current address: Department of Neurology -Inflammatory diseases of the nervous system and neurooncology, University Hospital Münster, 48149 Münster, Germany. 5 The Laboratory of Chemical Biology and Microbial Pathogenesis, The Rockefeller University, New York, NY 10065, USA 6 Centro Nacional de Biotecnología/Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CNB- CSIC), Darwin 3, Campus de Cantoblanco, E-28049 Madrid, Spain 7 To whom correspondence should be addressed, e-mail mvales@cnb.csic.es