A protein serine/threonine kinase, p160(ROCK), has been identified as a putative Rho target protein that is activated when bound to the GTP-bound form of the small GTPase Rho (Ishizaki, T., Maekawa, M., Fujisawa, K., Okawa, K., Iwamatu, A., Fujita, A., Watanabe, N. Saito, Y., Kakizuka, A., Morii, N., and Narumiya, S. (1996) EMBO J. 15, 1885-1893). p160(ROCK) has a serine/threonine kinase domain in its NH2-terminal region, followed by an approximately 600-amino acid-long alpha-helix, a cysteine-rich zinc finger-like motif, and a pleckstrin homology region in the COOH terminus. To identify the Rho binding domain of this protein, we divided p160 into five fragments, expressed each as a His-tagged recombinant protein, and performed a ligand overlay assay using [35S]guanosine-5'-3-O-(thio)triphosphate (GTPgammaS)-bound glutathione S-transferase-RhoA. Specific GTPgammaS-Rho binding was observed only in the fragment M2, which covered most of the carboxyl half of the alpha-helix between amino acids 727 and 1021. This fragment was further subdivided into several fragments, and the ligand overlay assay as well as the yeast two hybrid system was carried out to identify the Rho-binding region. These studies localized the minimum Rho binding region to amino acids 934-1015. To identify critical amino acids for Rho binding, we analyzed the Rho binding activity of the subfragment with various point mutations. This analysis revealed that K934M, L941A, and E1008A mutations significantly weakened Rho binding and an I1009A mutation abolished Rho binding. The amino acid sequence in this region had no significant homology with Rho effector motif class 1, which is shared by putative Rho targets, PKN, rhophilin, and rhotekin, (Reid, T., Furuyashiki, T., Ishizaki, T., Watanabe, G., Watanabe, N., Fujisawa, K., Morii, N., Madaule, P., and Narumiya, S. (1996) J. Biol. Chem. 271, 13556-13560) and may define a distinct class of Rho effector motif.