Epidermal growth factor activates phospholipase C in rat hepatocytes via a different mechanism from that in A431 or rat1hER cells

M Liang and JC Garrison

Department of Pharmacology, University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville 22908.

Epidermal growth factor (EGF) can stimulate inositol lipid hydrolysis in rat hepatocytes and can accelerate GTP/GDP exchange in hepatic membranes. Both of these responses can be abolished by pretreatment with pertussis toxin, suggesting that EGF may regulate phospholipase C (PLC) activity via a guanine nucleotide-binding regulatory protein (G protein) in liver cells. In contrast, in A431 human epidermoid carcinoma cells EGF can induce a rapid phosphorylation of PLC-gamma on tyrosine residues that increases the activity of immunoprecipitated PLC- gamma, suggesting that tyrosine phosphorylation of PLC-gamma may be the mechanism for EGF-stimulated inositol trisphosphate production in these cells. To determine the importance of the phosphorylation of PLC-gamma on tyrosine residues in a system where the EGF receptor apparently couples to a G protein, the effect of EGF on tyrosine phosphorylation of PLC-gamma was examined in rat hepatocytes. PLC-gamma was immunoprecipitated from cell lysates with a PLC-gamma antiserum and its tyrosine phosphorylation state was determined using both Western blot analysis with phosphotyrosine antibodies and direct measurement of phosphorylated amino acids. The results were compared with analogous experiments performed with A431 cells and another cultured cell line expressing high levels of human EGF receptors, Rat1hER fibroblasts. Although the amount of PLC-gamma in rat hepatocytes is similar to that in A431 cells and slightly higher than that in Rat1hER cells, EGF causes a barely detectable increase in the phosphorylation of PLC-gamma on tyrosine in hepatocytes, whereas it stimulates a significant degree of phosphorylation of PLC-gamma on tyrosine in Rat1hER or A431 cells. Pretreatment of hepatocytes with pertussis toxin abolishes the ability of EGF to activate PLC, as determined by an increase in intracellular Ca2+, but has no effect on the small amount of phosphate incorporated into tyrosine residues on the PLC-gamma protein, demonstrating that this low level of PLC-gamma phosphorylation does not correlate with changes in PLC activity. The data suggest that phosphorylation of PLC- gamma on tyrosine is not important for EGF-enhanced PLC activity in hepatocytes. This conclusion implies that EGF may use a mechanism to regulate PLC activity in hepatocytes that is different from that used in cultured cells expressing high levels of EGF receptors.

Volume 42, Issue 5, pp. 743-752, 11/01/1992
Copyright © 1992 by American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics