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J. Biol. Chem., Vol. 280, Issue 5, 3795-3801, February 4, 2005
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From the
Divisions of
Immunochemistry and
Molecular Biophysics, Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, Im Neuenheimer Feld 280, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany and the ¶Institute of Biochemistry, University of Cologne, Otto-Fischer-Strasse 12-14, D-50674 Cologne, Germany
Received for publication, September 9, 2004 , and in revised form, November 22, 2004.
| ABSTRACT |
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| INTRODUCTION |
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-subunits of the insulin receptor, which leads to autophosphorylation of the intracellular
-subunits (1). The crystal structures of the non-phosphorylated IRK domain (IRK-0P; "gate-closed" conformation) and the trisphosphorylated IRK domain (IRK-3P; "gate-open" conformation) have been described (2, 3). Dimerization of the IRK domain (4) or high concentrations of adenosine nucleotides (3, 5, 6) were found to favor the gate-open conformation even in the absence of autophosphorylation. The action of IRK can be down-regulated by a redox-sensitive protein-tyrosine phosphatase (7, 8). Brief exposure of cells to hydrogen peroxide was shown to increase insulin receptor autophosphorylation. In some studies, this effect was shown to involve the oxidative inactivation of protein-tyrosine phosphatase activity (713). The physiological significance of the role of hydrogen peroxide was underscored by the finding that insulin stimulates the formation of superoxide radicals and their derivative hydrogen peroxide by NAD(P)H oxidase in adipocytes (7, 1417). An important role of hydrogen peroxide in insulin signaling was also suggested by the finding that mice overexpressing cellular glutathione peroxidase develop insulin resistance (18).
Earlier studies have shown that IRK activity is increased or suppressed by sulfhydryl-reactive agents such as iodoacetamide, maleimidobutyrylbiocytin, and N-ethylmaleimide (1922), suggesting that the IRK domain may contain one or more functionally important cysteine residues. Treatment of cells with the glutathione reductase inhibitor 1-(2-chloroethyl)-3-(2-hydroxyethyl)-1-nitrosourea (BCNU), which is known to shift the intracellular thiol/disulfide redox status (23), causes a decrease in insulin receptor
-chain sulfhydryl groups (24). Using purified recombinant fragments of the IRK domain, we show here that hydrogen peroxide directly interacts with the IRK domain and enhances its autophosphorylation and kinase activity in the presence of ADP. In the absence of hydrogen peroxide, ADP was found to inhibit IRK activity in a dose-dependent way.
As creatine is utilized selectively by the brain and skeletal muscle tissues and mediates the rapid removal of ADP, i.e. a product of the kinase reaction, by cytoplasmic creatine kinase (2527), the IRK activity of muscle tissues may normally have a potentially important advantage compared with the IRK activity of adipocytes. The experiments in this study show, however, that the inhibition of IRK activity by its product ADP is subject to redox regulation.
| MATERIALS AND METHODS |
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Kinase Assay of Immunoprecipitated IR PrecipitationsFor IR kinase assays, the cells were washed with cold phosphate-buffered saline and 0.4 mM EDTA and lysed with lysis buffer containing 50 mM Tris (pH 7.2), 150 mM NaCl, 1% Nonidet P-40, 0.1% sodium deoxycholate, 1 mM EGTA, 5 mM NaF, 0.2 mM sodium orthovanadate, and CompleteTM protease inhibitors (Roche Applied Science, Basel, Switzerland). The IR was immunoprecipitated with the
-chain-specific antibody Ab-1 (Oncogene Science) (24). The pellet was resuspended in kinase buffer containing 50 mM HEPES (pH 7.2), 100 mM NaCl, 1 mM glutathione, 1 mM cysteine, and 5 mM Mg2+ plus 5 mM AMP-PNP and/or 0.2 mM ATP; preincubated for 30 min at 30 °C; and finally incubated for 20 min at 30 °C with 25 µM ATP and 5 µCi of [
-32P]ATP (PerkinElmer Life Sciences) in 15 µl of kinase buffer. The reaction was stopped by boiling in Laemmli sample buffer, and the proteins were separated by reducing SDS-PAGE (7% gels) in glycine/Tris buffer (pH 8.3), blotted onto nitrocellulose membranes, and finally subjected to autoradiography. Subsequently, tyrosine phosphorylation was detected by Western blotting with anti-phosphotyrosine antibody 4G10 (BIOMOL Research Labs Inc., Hamburg, Germany). IR expression was determined with anti-
-IR polyclonal antibody (Santa Cruz Biotechnology, Heidelberg, Germany) as described (24).
Transient TransfectionsCHO cells were transiently transfected with pECE vectors containing the human wild-type IR or its mutants C1056A, C1234A, C1245A, and C1308A (kindly provided by Dr. C. W. Ward, CSIRO Health Sciences and Nutrition, Parkville, Australia). Transfections were performed with 1.5 µg of DNA using the Polyfect reagent (QIAGEN Inc., Hilden, Germany) according to the manufacturer's instructions. After incubation for 30 h, cells were incubated for 17 h in serum-free nutrient mixture F-12 and finally incubated with or without 60 µM hydrogen peroxide for 30 min. Cells were lysed, and the resulting immunoprecipitates were processed as described above.
Purified Recombinant IRK PreparationsThe IRK-D fragment containing Val978Lys1283 of the human IR with mutations C981S and Y984F (35 kDa) was prepared by constructing a baculovirus transfer vector (pVL1393). The sequence was verified by automated sequencing. Cotransfection of Sf9 cells and isolation of recombinant baculoviruses were performed as described (4). Sf9 cells were lysed in 20 mM Tris-HCl(pH 7.5), 250 mM sucrose, 1 mM dithiothreitol, and CompleteTM by sonication, and the recombinant protein was purified by sequential chromatography on Q (6-ml column; Amersham Biosciences), Superdex 75 (Amersham Biosciences), and Mono Q (1-ml column; Amersham Biosciences) and finally shock-frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored at -74 °C. In addition, the entire cytosolic domain of IRK was expressed as a glutathione S-transferase (GST) fusion protein (GST-IRK, 71 kDa) in insect cells and purified to homogeneity by affinity chromatography as described previously (4).
Aliquots containing 0.4 µg of GST-IRK or IRK-D were typically mixed with kinase buffer containing 1 mg/ml bovine serum albumin, 10 µg/ml myelin basic protein (MBP), 1 mM cysteine, and 1 mM glutathione with or without 60 µM hydrogen peroxide (final concentrations). Unless indicated otherwise, the samples were incubated for 15 min at 30 °C, mixed with ATP substrate solution (0.4 mM ATP and 0.1 µCi/µl [
-32P]ATP) in a final volume of 15 µl/sample; and subjected to kinase assay at 30 °C with shaking.
Native Gel Kinase AssayAliquots of 0.75 µg of IRK-D were mixed with 1 µg of MBP in 6 µl of buffer containing 50 mM HEPES (pH 7.3), 0.1 mM dithiothreitol, 3 mM MgCl2, and 200 mM NaCl. After adding 1 µl of 0.42 mM hydrogen peroxide (final concentration of 60 µM), the sample was incubated for 10 min at room temperature and then mixed with 1 µl of 20 mM ATP (final concentration of 2.5 mM). Aliquots of 4 µl were incubated for another 5 or 30 min, subsequently mixed with 1.25 µl of stop buffer (20 mM EDTA, 50 mM Tris (pH 7.5), and 40% glycerol), immediately frozen, and eventually applied to an 8% nondenaturing polyacrylamide gel containing 0.375 M Tris (pH 8.8). Finally, the samples were run for 60 min at 145 V in Tris/glycine buffer (pH 8.5) and blotted onto nitrocellulose membranes using a semidry blotting apparatus. The membranes were incubated overnight with anti-phosphotyrosine antibody 4G10 and treated with a chemiluminescent reagent (PerkinElmer Life Sciences). Subsequently, the membranes were washed with hot water and incubated with antibodies against phosphorylated Tyr1158 of IRK (BIOSOURCE, Nivelles, Belgium). After incubation with alkaline phosphatase-coupled anti-rabbit IgG, the resulting bands were detected using a chemiluminescent alkaline phosphatase substrate (Bio-Rad, Munich).
Three-dimensional Modeling of the Phosphorylated IR
-Chain and of Derivatized ProteinsThe three-dimensional structures of the IRK-3P domain and its derivatives were modeled on an Indigo II work-station (Silicon Graphics). The starting coordinates of non-hydrogen atoms were taken from Protein Data Bank entry 1ir3
[PDB]
(3). Selected atoms were removed; atoms not reported in the Protein Data Bank were inserted with the help of the INSIGHT II library; and hydrogen atoms were added. Energy minimization was performed using the DISCOVER module of the INSIGHT II program (Accelrys Inc.) as described (31). The figures of the minimized structures were obtained by RasMol.
| RESULTS |
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-chain fragments. Two constructs were prepared, a GST-tagged fragment comprising the entire cytosolic domain of the
-chain (GST-IRK, 71 kDa) and a non-tagged fragment comprising the kinase domain from Val978 to Lys1283 (IRK-D, 35 kDa). The purified proteins were first incubated with or without 60 µM hydrogen peroxide and with 1 mM ATP and then subjected to kinase assay with [32P]ATP. The results show that hydrogen peroxide treatment enhanced the incorporation of 32P (Fig. 1A). To further characterize the effect, we separated the different phosphorylated forms of IRK-D on native polyacrylamide gels on the basis of charge (32). The proteins were then transferred to nitrocellulose and detected by phospho-specific antibodies. All three phosphorylated forms of IRK-D were found to be markedly enhanced by hydrogen peroxide if tested after 30 min of incubation (Fig. 1B). The non-phosphorylated state (IRK-0P) reacted only weakly with both antibodies but accounted for 90% of the IRK-D fragment (data not shown).
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Effect of Hydrogen Peroxide in Combination with the ATP Analog AMP-PNPLike ADP, AMP-PNP facilitates the conversion of the gate-closed conformation into the gate-open conformation (3, 5, 6). But AMP-PNP is larger than ADP and, unlike ATP, is non-hydrolyzable. We therefore incubated GST-IRK with or without 60 µM hydrogen peroxide for 15 min and with 2 mM AMP-PNP for another 30 min, precipitated the enzyme subsequently with anti-GST antibody-agarose, and determined the autophosphorylation activity using [
-32P]ATP and 0.2 mM ATP. The results show that, under these conditions, hydrogen peroxide enhanced IRK activity, on the average, by as much as 8.59-fold (p < 0.01) (data not shown).
IRK Activity of Hydrogen Peroxide-treated Cells in the Absence and Presence of InsulinTo study the effect of hydrogen peroxide on the IR in intact cells, CHO-HIR cells (28) were incubated with or without 50 µM hydrogen peroxide for 30 min prior to harvest. The receptor was immunoprecipitated and then preincubated for 30 min with 0.2 mM unlabeled ATP with or without 5 mM AMP-PNP prior to kinase assay with 25 µM ATP plus 5 µCi of [
-32P]ATP. As the kinase reaction was performed with 25 µM ATP, the endogenous formation of ADP was relatively small in these experiments. If tested without preincubation, i.e. in the absence of AMP-PNP and ADP, receptor preparations from hydrogen peroxide-treated cells were not detectably different from control samples (data not shown). In contrast, after preincubation, kinase activity was strongly enhanced by hydrogen peroxide (Fig. 3, AC). The strongest enhancement was again seen after preincubation with AMP-PNP. A similar enhancing effect of hydrogen peroxide was observed in insulin-stimulated cells (Fig. 3D).
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Alternative Mode of Redox Regulation of IRK Activity by BCNUAs several other signaling processes have been shown to be induced alternatively by hydrogen peroxide or by an oxidative shift in the thiol/disulfide redox status (reviewed in Refs. 33 and 34), we also studied the effect of the intracellular redox status on IRK activation. To induce an oxidative shift in the intracellular thiol/disulfide redox status, the cells were treated with the glutathione reductase inhibitor BCNU (see Ref. 23). The results show that BCNU treatment mediated an enhancing effect similar to that of hydrogen peroxide (Fig. 3, AC).
Effect of Hydrogen Peroxide on Mutant Insulin Receptor ProteinsTo determine whether the enhancing effect of hydrogen peroxide may involve a cysteine residue of the IR
-chain, we performed experiments with CHO cells transiently transfected with DNA from mutant proteins. Cells were treated with or without 60 µM hydrogen peroxide for 30 min prior to harvest and analyzed as described above. As mutant C1138A was previously found to be functionally defective (30), this mutant was not included in this study. The results show that hydrogen peroxide enhanced the relative autophosphorylation of the wild-type receptor and mutant C1056A (Fig. 5). The enhancing effect was statistically not significant with mutant C1234A, and it was completely abrogated with mutant C1245A. Autophosphorylation of C1308A was inhibited by hydrogen peroxide.
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-chain were derived from Protein Data Bank entry 1ir3
[PDB]
(3). Certain atoms were removed, and other atoms not reported in entry 1ir3 were inserted with the help of the INSIGHT II library. Ser981 and Phe984 were replaced with the authentic Cys981 and Tyr984, respectively, and AMP-PNP was replaced with ATP before energy minimization.
The resulting structure (Fig. 6A) was the basis for all further derivatizations. The
- and
-phosphate groups of the nucleotide are held in place by two magnesium atoms, Mg1 and Mg2 (purple) (3). Mg1 is held in place by Asn1137 O-
and Asp O-
1, whereas Mg2 is coordinated with Asp1150 O-
2 and Glu1047 O-
1. The space-filling model in the right panel shows a view into the nucleotide-binding cleft. After removal of ATP and peptide, energy minimization revealed a strikingly altered structure (Fig. 6B). Among other changes, the distance between the backbone amide of Gly1005 and the nearest O-
of Asp1150, i.e. the space available for the insertion of Mg2 and
-phosphate, was decreased from 9.22 to 5.61 Å. The distance from Asp1150 O-
2 to Glu1047 O-
1, i.e. the contact points, was markedly increased from 3.25 to 4.23 Å, and the angle between Asn1137 O-
, Asp1150 O-
1, and Asp1150 O-
2 was decreased from 165° to 125°. These conspicuous changes in the binding site strongly suggest that the access of the nucleotide-magnesium complex and the formation of the correct protein-nucleotide complex are markedly impaired. However, if IRK-3P was glutathionylated at Cys1245 (Fig. 6C) or Cys1234 (Fig. 6D) prior to removal of ATP and peptide substrate, subsequent energy minimization yielded a structure in which all relevant contact points were arranged in a way similar to the original ATP-loaded structure (Fig. 6A). The distances between the nitrogen of Gly1005 and the nearest O-
of Asp1150 were 7.11 and 7.55 Å, respectively, and the angles between Asn1137 O-
, Asp1150 O-
1, and Asp1150 O-
2 were 158° and 164°, respectively. The space-filling models in the right panels show that the position of Gly1005 relative to its neighbors is very similar in panels A, C, and D but markedly different in panel B. The structures glutathionylated at Cys981 or Cys1056 (data not shown) were similar to unmodified IRK-3P without ATP (Fig. 6B). The glutathionylated structures IRK-3P C1245S-SG and IRK-3P C1234S-SG with ATP and substrate (data not shown) were essentially indistinguishable from the structure in Fig. 6A.
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| DISCUSSION |
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The enhancing effect of hydrogen peroxide in the presence of ADP is tentatively explained by a mechanism involving oxidative modification of a critical cysteine residue. As mutations at Cys1245 or Cys1308 abrogated the enhancing effect of hydrogen peroxide (Fig. 5), we tentatively assumed that these cysteine residues may be involved. It is reasonable to assume that hydrogen peroxide causes the formation of a mixed disulfide between a certain cysteine residue of the IRK protein and a small molecular mass thiol compound in the vicinity. When intact cells were treated with hydrogen peroxide as in Fig. 3, the oxidized cytoplasmic IRK domain was inevitably exposed to millimolar concentrations of glutathione as the quantitatively most important intracellular thiol compound. Experiments with purified IRK fragments were therefore routinely performed in the presence of glutathione. Control experiments showed that hydrogen peroxide enhanced kinase activity even after omission of glutathione and cysteine (data not shown); but as IRK fragments were typically stabilized with dithiothreitol, the kinase reaction mixture contained, in this case, this small molecular mass compound at
0.1 mM. We tentatively assume that the resulting mixed protein-dithiothreitol disulfide may have a structure equivalent to those of the glutathionylated IRK structures modeled in Fig. 6. It has previously been shown for other proteins that hydrogen peroxide converts certain cysteine residues into sulfenic acid residues, which spontaneously interact with glutathione to form mixed proteinglutathione disulfides (reviewed in Refs. 38 and 39). Similar mechanisms were shown to operate in other models of redox regulation. Molecular modeling studies indicated that removal of the nucleotide and substrate from the original IRK-3P structure (Fig. 6A) leads to a structural change (Fig. 6B) that compromises the accessibility of the binding site and the coordinated incorporation of the magnesium atoms. In contrast, the relevant contact points in the glutathionylated structures IRK-3P C1245S-SG (Fig. 6C) and IRK-3P C1234S-SG (Fig. 6D) were found to have distances and angles similar to those of the original ATP-loaded structure. This finding provides a satisfactory explanation for the positive effect of hydrogen peroxide in the presence of ADP or AMP-PNP. Whereas the inhibition of IRK activity by ADP in the absence of hydrogen peroxide is best explained by the competition for the ATP-binding site, ADP and AMP-PNP may enhance IRK activity in the presence of hydrogen peroxide by facilitating the conversion of the gateclosed conformation into the gate-open conformation (3, 5, 6). This positive effect would require, however, that the binding site remain essentially unaltered after the release of these nonproductive ATP analogs, i.e. before the next round of (productive) nucleotide binding. This is essentially the case for IRK-3P Cys1245S-SG and IRK-3P Cys1234S-SG but not for the unmodified structure or the structures IRK-3P Cys981S-SG and IRK-3P Cys1056S-SG. The effect of hydrogen peroxide on mutant C1245A was more severely compromised than that on mutant C1234A (Fig. 5), but this difference was not statistically significant and may be explained by the fact that Cys1245 is more easily accessible for glutathionylation than Cys1234 (data not shown). Equivalents of Cys1245 in IRK such as Cys475 in Lck, Cys498 in v-Src, and Cys376 in Ret-PTC-1 were shown previously to play an important role in the regulation of the catalytic or transforming activity of these kinase species (3638). The data of Fig. 5 also reveal that mutant C1308A was inhibited by hydrogen peroxide rather than enhanced. The mechanism of this effect is not known but is tentatively explained by the assumption that, after hydrogen peroxide treatment, Cys1308 may also form a functionally important disulfide bridge. One possibility is that Cys1308 may form a disulfide bridge with Cys1245 and that this may be functionally equivalent or even superior to the glutathionylated structure. As Protein Data Bank entry 1ir3
[PDB]
contains amino acids up to position 1283, we were not able to model this intramolecular disulfide structure. Cys1308 is located in the C-terminal tail of the
-chain.
These mechanistic models were further supported by the substantial enhancement of IRK activity by BCNU, an agent known to cause an oxidative intracellular shift in the glutathione redox status in various cell types (see Ref. 23). The enhancing effect of the glutathione reductase inhibitor BCNU on IRK activity (Fig. 3) is taken as an indication for an alternative mode of IRK activation by an oxidative shift in the glutathione redox status. This alternative mechanism may be pathophysiologically relevant in view of the age-related changes in the intracellular glutathione redox status that have been found in human and rat skeletal muscle tissues (39, 40) and in the livers, kidneys, and brains of rats and mice (4143). An age- and disease-related oxidative shift in the plasma thiol/disulfide redox status has also been observed in the blood plasma (44, 45). An independent study of mice has shown that the plasma thiol/disulfide redox status directly correlates with the muscular glutathione redox status (46).
Molecular modeling of double-glutathionylated IRK proteins, i.e. structures glutathionylated at Cys1245 plus Cys1056, yielded structures with impaired accessibility of the nucleotide-binding site (data not shown). This effect is therefore one possibility to explain the observed hydrogen peroxide-mediated inhibition of kinase activity. However, this possibility is highly speculative, as one can think of various other mechanisms that potentially explain the oxidative destruction of the catalytic activity by hydrogen peroxide.
The physiological significance of the ADP effect is related to the fact that, in muscle tissue, high phosphocreatine concentrations in combination with cytoplasmic creatine kinase normally ensure rapid conversion of ADP into ATP (see the Introduction), whereas in adipose tissue, conversion of ADP into ATP depends on the relatively slow diffusion of ADP to the mitochondrial matrix. The cytoplasmic ADP concentration of adipose tissue is therefore expected to be markedly higher than that of resting muscle cells, which typically contain 13 µM ADP, 4 mM ATP, and 25 mM phosphocreatine (47). Accordingly, the insulin reactivity of fat cells is expected to be weaker than that of skeletal muscle cells unless the ADP-mediated inhibition is ameliorated by an oxidative shift in redox status. Even relatively small changes in absolute autophosphorylation rates may significantly alter the delicate balance between muscle and adipose tissues with respect to insulin responsiveness and fuel deposition. This conclusion is supported by a recent clinical study of non-diabetic obese subjects (48) showing that (i) obesity is associated with abnormally low plasma thiol (mainly cysteine) levels; (ii) insulin reactivity is decreased in patients supplemented with N-acetylcysteine; and (iii) glucose clearance, i.e. the bona fide indicator of the insulin reactivity of muscle cells, is increased by simultaneous treatment with creatine if the patients are treated with N-acetylcysteine but not with placebo. Moreover, the mean HOMA-R index, which is defined as (fasting plasma glucose (mg/dl) x fasting plasma insulin concentration (milliunits/ml)) x 405-1 and which is therefore an inverse indicator of insulin reactivity in the post-absorptive period, was found to be increased in the group with N-acetylcysteine plus placebo but decreased in the group with N-acetylcysteine plus creatine (48). N-Acetylcysteine treatment with or without creatine supplementation or treatment with a cysteine-rich protein has been shown to cause a decrease in body fat (4850), suggesting that the redox regulation of IRK activity may contribute to the development of obesity.
The finding that hydrogen peroxide or an oxidative shift in the thiol/disulfide redox status increases IRK autophosphorylation in the absence of insulin further suggests that the insulin-independent IR "basal activity" may increase in old age and other conditions associated with an oxidative shift in the plasma thiol/disulfide redox status (44, 48). A decrease in IR signaling was recently found to increase longevity and stress resistance in various species (reviewed in Ref. 51). Mice with fat-specific IR knockout also show increased resistance to obesity (52). Importantly, the increased longevity of Caenorhabditis elegans mutants with defective DAF-2 protein, i.e. an IR analog, was shown to require an increase in autophagic activity (53). As autophagy is suppressed by the IR signaling cascade and therefore restricted to the fasted state (reviewed in Ref. 54), increased longevity appears to be the consequence of decreased IRK basal activity in the absence of insulin.
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|| To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel.: 49-6221-423-706; Fax: 49-6221-423-746; E-mail: W.Droege{at}DKFZ.de.
1 The abbreviations used are: IRK, insulin receptor kinase; BCNU, 1-(2-chloroethyl)-3-(2-hydroxyethyl)-1-nitrosourea; CHO, Chinese hamster ovary; IR, insulin receptor; AMP-PNP, adenyl-5'-(yl iminodiphosphate); GST, glutathione S-transferase; MBP, myelin basic protein. ![]()
| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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