Diabetes, Vol 39, Issue 11 1339-1346, Copyright © 1990 by American Diabetes Association
Effect of bacitracin on retroendocytosis and degradation of insulin in cultured kidney epithelial cell line
DC Dahl, T Tsao, WC Duckworth, BH Frank and R Rabkin
Department of Medicine, Stanford University, CA.
In an earlier study, we described the presence of a retroendocytotic
pathway for insulin in a cultured kidney epithelial cell line. Derived from
the opossum kidney (OK), these cells possess many features of proximal
tubule epithelium, which is the major site of kidney insulin metabolism. We
studied the interaction between the retroendocytotic and the degradative
pathways with bacitracin as a pharmacological probe. Monolayers of OK cells
were loaded with 125I-labeled insulin over 30 min, acid washed to remove
membrane-bound insulin, then incubated in fresh medium for 60 min while the
release of intracellular radioactivity was monitored. In experiments
carried out in the presence of bacitracin (2 mM), there was a two-thirds
increase in intracellular radioactivity at the end of the loading phase.
Measurements made during the subsequent release phase showed that
bacitracin reduced the release of degradation products. Thus, although
controls released 72.1 +/- 8.1% of the internalized radioactivity as
trichloroacetic acid (TCA)-soluble products, bacitracin-treated cells
released 59.2 +/- 9.4% (P less than 0.02). In contrast, release of
TCA-precipitable insulin increased from 15.2 +/- 4.6% in controls to 25.8
+/- 3.7% in bacitracin-treated cells (P less than 0.01). In separate
experiments analyzed by gel-exclusion chromatography, 6.4 +/- 0.6% of
radioactivity released from preloaded control cells into medium over 60 min
was insulin sized compared to 29.7 +/- 1.4% in bacitracin-treated cells.
High-performance liquid chromatography revealed that 61.5 +/- 3.5% of this
insulin-sized material released from control cells preloaded with
A14-insulin eluted as intact insulin and the remainder as unidentified
intermediate degradation products.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)