Diabetes, Vol 41, Issue 6 766-770, Copyright © 1992 by American Diabetes Association
Colocalization of GLUT2 glucose transporter, sodium/glucose cotransporter, and gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase in rat kidney with double-peroxidase immunocytochemistry
SC Cramer, WM Pardridge, BA Hirayama and EM Wright
Department of Medicine, School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles 90024-1682.
Glucose is reabsorbed from the glomerular filtrate in the proximal segment
of the renal tubule in two stages. The first stage is uphill transport
across the brush border membrane by Na(+)-glucose cotransport and the
second stage is downhill transport across the basolateral membrane by
facilitated diffusion. Genes for both a renal Na(+)-glucose cotransporter
(SGLT1) and a renal facilitated glucose transporter (GLUT2) have been
cloned and sequenced. To examine whether SGLT1 and GLUT2 colocalize to the
same tubular epithelial cells in rat kidney, double-immunoperoxidase
studies with dual chromogens and paraformaldehyde perfusion-fixed frozen
sections of rat kidney were performed. Antipeptide antisera were prepared
against rat GLUT2 (amino acids 510-522) and rabbit SGLT1 (amino acids
402-420). Proximal tubules were identified immunocytochemically with an
antiserum raised against a synthetic peptide corresponding to the 21 amino
acids at the COOH-terminal of the heavy chain of rat gamma-glutamyl
transpeptidase, which is a proximal tubule-specific enzyme. The anti-GLUT2
antiserum strongly stained the basolateral membrane of 46% of cortical
tubules, whereas the SGLT1 antiserum stained the brush border of 56% of the
cortical tubules. The gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase antiserum also stained
the brush border of 51% of the cortical tubules. GLUT2 and SGLT1
colocalized to 40% of cortical epithelium, but 16% of cortical epithelial
cells were immunopositive for brush border SGLT1 and immunonegative for
basolateral GLUT2. These gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase staining results
suggest that at least 50% of the tubules in the cortex are proximal tubules
and that SGLT1 and GLUT2 colocalize to most proximal tubules. The fact that
SGLT1 antiserum immunoreacted with tubules unreactive to the GLUT2
antiserum suggests that either the SGLT1 epitope is conserved on a related
brush border protein or that there is another GLUT transporter responsible
for the exit of sugar from these proximal tubule cells.