title: Differences in degradation processes for insulin and its receptor in cultured foetal hepatocytes.
abstract: Binding and degradation of 125I-labelled insulin were studied in cultured foetal hepatocytes after exposure to the protein-synthesis inhibitors tunicamycin and cycloheximide. Tunicamycin (1 microgram/ml) induced a steady decrease of insulin binding, which was decreased by 50% after 13 h. As the total number of binding sites per hepatocyte was 20000, the rate of the receptor degradation could not exceed 13 sites/min per hepatocyte. Cycloheximide (2.8 micrograms/ml) increased insulin binding by 30% within 6 h, an effect that persisted for up to 25 h. This drug had a specific inhibitory effect on the degradation of proteins prelabelled for 10 h with [14C]glucosamine, without affecting the degradation of total proteins. Chronic exposure to 10 nM-insulin neither decreased insulin binding nor modified the effect of the drugs. The absence of down-regulation of insulin receptors cannot be attributed to rapid receptor biosynthesis in foetal hepatocytes. Cellular insulin degradation, which is exclusively receptor-mediated, was determined by two different parameters. First, the rate of release of degraded insulin into the medium was 600 molecules/min per hepatocyte with 1 nM labelled hormone, and increased (preincubation with cycloheximide) or decreased (tunicamycin) as a function of the amount of cell-bound insulin. Secondly, the percentage of cell-bound insulin degraded was not changed by the presence of protein-synthesis inhibitors (25-30%). The stability of insulin degradation suggested that this process was dependent on long-life proteinase systems. Such differences in degradation rates and cycloheximide sensitivity imply that hormone- and receptor-degradation processes utilize distinct pathways.
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002478:Cells, Cultured; D003513:Cycloheximide / Q000494:pharmacology; D005333:Fetus; D007328:Insulin / Q000378:metabolism*; D008099:Liver / Q000187:drug effects / Q000378:metabolism*; D008112:Liver Glycogen / Q000096:biosynthesis; D011506:Proteins / Q000378:metabolism; D051381:Rats; D011919:Rats, Inbred Strains; D011972:Receptor, Insulin / Q000378:metabolism*; D014415:Tunicamycin / Q000494:pharmacology
chemical_list: D007328:Insulin; D008112:Liver Glycogen; D011506:Proteins; D014415:Tunicamycin; D003513:Cycloheximide; D011972:Receptor, Insulin