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1Department of Cell and Molecular Physiology, 2Michael Hooker Microscopy Facility, and 3Cystic Fibrosis/Pulmonary Research and Treatment Center, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Submitted 7 March 2006 ; accepted in final form 17 August 2006
| ABSTRACT |
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) has not been reported. In this article, we describe the results of experiments measuring Ca
in primary cultures of human bronchial goblet cells after stimulation with the purinergic agonist adenosine 5'-O-(3-thiotriphosphate) (ATP
S) and phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate (PMA). Ca2+ signaling in human goblet cells after purinergic stimulation follows the classic paradigm of a Ca
transient from a basal activity of 110 nM to a peak response of 260.1 ± 41.2 nM within 2 min, followed by a long superbasal plateau (155.3 ± 0.2 nM) between 10 and 15 min. The rise in Ca
appears to result from a mobilization of intracellular stores, because the transient was nearly abolished by inhibition of PLC with the phosphatidylinositol-specific PLC inhibitor U-73122, and it was not affected significantly by removal of extracellular Ca2+. Loading goblet cells with BAPTA inhibited the ATP
S-induced Ca2+ transient by 86.0 ± 13.1%, relative to control. Finally, in contrast to the massive effects of high doses of PMA (300 nM) on mucin secretion from goblet cells, phorbol ester stimulated a small (27.1 ± 7% of the ATP
S control peak), brief rise in Ca
. This diminutive signal likely denotes a local Ca2+ gradient, which may be associated with the mucin granule exocytotic process. mucus; exocytosis; purinergic signaling; P2Y2
P2Y2 purinoceptors represent a major G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) pathway regulating mucin secretion from airway goblet cells (3, 9, 11, 22). Consistent with a coupling of P2Y2 receptors to PLC (18), mucin secretion is stimulated by the diacylglycerol mimic phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate (PMA) (2, 11, 22, 26) and by maneuvers that mobilize intracellular Ca2+ (Ca
) [ionomycin, inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate (IP3), thapsigargin] (2, 11, 22, 39), and it is inhibited by sequestering Ca
(BAPTA) (22). Beginning with the demonstration in 1965 that synaptic transmission is Ca2+ dependent (21), we now know that Ca
regulates numerous critical processes leading to the exocytotic release of neurotransmitters and secreted proteins from neurons and secretory cells. In secretory cells, numerous studies have suggested that Ca2+ is the trigger for exocytosis during at least three distinct stages: 1) disassembly of the actin cytoskeleton (42) to permit secretory granules to access exocytotic sites on the plasma membrane, 2) priming of the docked granule (24), and 3) triggering of the fusion event between secretory granule and plasma membranes (4, 15, 41) to allow the release of secretory granule contents. In this article, we offer the results of the first experiments to measure Ca
in airway goblet cells, after activation by purinergic agonists, with the goal of defining the fundamental Ca2+ signaling mechanisms in this important cell type preparatory to more advanced studies.
| MATERIALS AND METHODS |
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S) from Roche Applied Science (Indianapolis, IN); PMA from Calbiochem (La Jolla, CA); BAPTA-AM, fura-2 AM, and a Ca2+ calibration kit from Molecular Probes (Eugene, OR); U-73122 and D-609 from Biomol (Plymouth Meeting, PA); HEPES from Media Tech (Herndon, VA), MnCl2, NaCl, and Na2HPO4 from Mallinckrodt (Hazelwood, MO); and digitonin, CaCl2, EGTA, MgCl2, KCl, and
-tubulin monoclonal antibody from Sigma Chemical (St. Louis, MO). Dermabond, a nontoxic cyanoacrylate tissue adhesive, was obtained from Ethicon Incorporated (Somerville, NJ), and Sylgard 184 was obtained from Dow Corning (Midland, MI).
Human bronchial epithelial cell culture and staining procedure.
Human bronchial epithelial (HBE) cells were obtained in accordance with Institutional Review Board-approved protocols, as described previously (29, 30, 36), from normal human bronchi. Briefly, HBE cells were isolated and grown on plastic culture dishes in bronchial epithelial cell growth medium (BEGM) (17) and passaged at
80% confluence, and first-passage cells were seeded onto 12-mm Transwell-Col supports (TCols; Costar) at 250,000 cells per support. After confluence was obtained, the cells were maintained under air-liquid interface (ALI) conditions in ALI culture medium (BEGM modified per Refs. 29, 36), which was changed at the basolateral surface three times a week. HBE cell cultures were used for experiments 46 wk after confluence, a time when the columnar cells are well differentiated as ciliated or goblet cells.
Preparations were stained for cilia and mucin identification (see Fig. 1). HBE cell cultures on TCols, derived from five different donors, were gently washed to remove luminal mucus, fixed from the luminal side in 4% paraformaldehyde for 5 min, permeabilized with cold methanol for 3 min, stained for mucin with the periodic acid biotin-hydrazide (PABH) procedure (11), and then immunostained for
-tubulin with a rat-derived monoclonal antibody and standard procedures.
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50 µm thick), in which a rectangular region was cut out to form a perfusion channel when the chamber halves were assembled. A push/pull syringe pump (PHD 2000 infuse/withdraw; Harvard Apparatus, Holliston, MA) was used to drive the perfused fluids. Buffer was maintained on the upper, serosal surface of the culture, as a static bath, throughout the experiment. The assembled chamber was placed into a Bioptechs Delta-T heated stage insert we modified to include screw-operated hold-downs to hold the chamber together during perfusion. A thermistor in the Delta-T stage insert, in contact with the coverslip delimiting the luminal half-chamber, and the Bioptechs temperature controller maintained the glass at a temperature necessary to hold the luminal perfusate, sensed by a second thermistor integral to the chamber and bathed by the perfusate, at 35°C. The serosal bath was unheated. Microscopy and Cai2+ measurements. A Nikon (Tokyo, Japan) TE-2000 inverted microscope and x60 water immersion objective (1.0 numerical aperture, 2.0-mm working distance) were used to view HBE cells by simultaneous differential interference contrast (DIC) and fluorescence microscopy, with a Nikon dual image module, under the control of Simple PCI software (Compix, Cranberry Township, PA). A DVC-1312 cooled charge-coupled device camera (DVC, Austin, TX) collected red transmitted light (605615 nm) for DIC imaging, and a DVC-1412 Intensicam (Gen III intensifier; 1,392 x 1,040 pixels x 12 bits) was used to collect fura-2 fluorescence (510 ± 40 nm). Fura-2 was excited alternatively at 340 ± 5 and 380 ± 5 nm with a 175-W xenon arc lamp integral to a DG-4 rapid-switching illuminator (Sutter Instruments, Novato, CA). Fura-2 fluorescence at the two excitation wavelengths and the DIC images were collected every 3 s, using acquisition times for excitation at 340 and 380 nm of 250 and 200 ms, respectively. The DIC images were used to distinguish between ciliated cells and goblet cells (see Fig. 1B) as well as to generally monitor the appearance of the preparation.
At the end of an experiment, a solution containing digitonin (20 µM) and MnCl2 (2 mM) was used to quench the dye. Background fluorescence images were obtained at each excitation wavelength, which then were subtracted from the images at each wavelength collected during the experiment. Simple PCI software was used to define a region of interest containing 810 goblet cells in each preparation for offline analysis. Ca
activities were calculated and reported in nanomoles per liter only for the experiment depicted in Fig. 2; an external Ca2+ calibration kit (Molecular Probes) was used for this purpose. For all other experiments, the data are presented as the ratio of fura-2 emission at 510 nm with 340-nm and 380-nm excitation.
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activities determined over time were taken as the mean of the measurements made in the 810 goblet cells studied in each culture. The data for each experiment are reported as means ± SE for five HBE cultures derived from different patients. Cells from dissimilar sets of patients were used in the different experiments. Significance between experimental means (P < 0.05) was determined with Student's t-test. | RESULTS |
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S stimulation, indicating they were goblet cells. Unfortunately, the mucus could not be imaged clearly because it is optically transparent. We observed it to appear on the luminal surface when the cells were stimulated, however, as clear blobs that grew in size with time after it initially appeared and that could be washed away. To test the veracity of this identification, we stained several intact HBE cell cultures for cilia, using an antibody against
-tubulin, and for mucin, using the PABH stain (11). Figure 1B shows a typical result: the columnar cells visible at the luminal aspect of the culture stained either for axonemal tubulin or for mucin. In the five cultures derived from different patients so assessed the columnar cells observed stained for tubulin or for mucin, but none stained for both. To minimize the possible inclusion of data derived from an occasional nonciliated, nongoblet cell, we routinely measured the Ca2+ responses from 810 nonciliated cells in each preparation and averaged the results.
ATP
S-induced calcium signals in human airway goblet cells.
ATP, UTP, and ATP
S are approximately equipotent in the stimulation of mucin secretion from airway goblet cells (3, 11, 22), which indicates a lack of a significant expression of P2Y11 receptors (10, 35). Hence, to stimulate P2Y2 receptors fairly specifically, we used ATP
S as an agonist, taking advantage of its poor hydrolyzability to diphosphate nucleotides. Figure 2 depicts the Ca
response of HBE goblet cells to ATP
S over a time course of 20 min. Immediately subsequent to this experiment, a Ca2+ calibration procedure was performed to allow the data to be expressed directly as activities. Basal Ca
was 110.7 ± 0.3 nM, and ATP
S triggered a rise to a peak of 260.1 ± 41.2 nM, after which Ca
spontaneously declined to a sustained plateau lasting for the duration of the experiment of 155.3 ± 0.2 nM (measured between 10 and 25 min). Hence, HBE goblet cells appear to respond to a PLC-coupled GPCR agonist like most cells, with a classic peak-and-plateau type of Ca
response (13, 18, 31).
To determine whether sequential stimuli could be used with these cells to gain the advantage of internally controlled experiments, HBE cell cultures were exposed to ATP
S twice, 5 min each, separated by a 15-min washout. ATP
S triggered a peak Ca
response in each instance (Fig. 3A) that was similar to the peak elicited in the previous experiment, and there was no significant difference between the Ca
peaks elicited by the first and second exposures to ATP
S (Fig. 3B). These results suggest that successive agonist challenges, bracketing a 15-min washout period, elicit statistically similar responses.
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S-induced Ca
increase on PLC and extracellular Ca2+.
To test the dependence of the goblet cell Ca
response to agonist on PLC, HBE cultures were exposed either to the phosphatidylcholine-specific PLC inhibitor D-609 (10 µM) or the phosphatidylinositol-specific PLC inhibitor U-73122 (30 µM) during both the 15-min washout period and the second ATP
S challenge. D-609 had no apparent effect on the peak Ca2+ response induced by ATP
S (Fig. 4, A and C), whereas U-73122 blunted the Ca2+ response by 75.6 ± 3.7% (P < 0.05; Fig. 4, B and C). Hence, purinergic agonists appear to elicit a Ca2+ response in goblet cells through the release of IP3, by PLC, from phosphatidylinositol.
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) contributes to the peak ATP
S-induced Ca2+ response in airway goblet cells, Ca2+ was omitted from and EGTA (1 mM) added to the perfusate in the washout period, immediately after the first exposure to ATP
S. It should be noted in Fig. 5 that the removal of Ca
during the washout period caused Ca
to decline from its agonist-induced peak to a new baseline that was slightly higher than the initial baseline. The effect of the Ca2+-free exposure on the goblet cell Ca
response to a second agonist stimulation, however, was minimal: the second Ca
response to ATP
S was 85 ± 19.8% of the control response (not significant, P > 0.05; Fig. 5).
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S-induced increases in Ca
, HBE cells were preloaded with BAPTA (BAPTA-AM; 250 µM, 1 h). The loading procedure was the same as that used by others (22), who found that ATP
S-induced mucin secretion from HBE cells was inhibited significantly by BAPTA only when the concentrations of the AM form of the chelator were elevated to this high degree. We observed that all of the BAPTA-loaded HBE cultures appeared normal and ciliary activity was apparent throughout each experiment. In the present experiment, cultures that were not loaded with BAPTA-AM originating from the same patients were used as paired controls. The cells were perfused with HBR for 5 min and then exposed to ATP
S. As shown in Fig. 6, BAPTA inhibited the ATP
S-triggered Ca
peak response by 86.0 ± 13.1% relative to control.
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PMA stimulates mucin secretion from HBE cells grown in tracheal xenografts (11) or in culture (22, 26) as well as in SPOC1 cells (2) and many other mucin-secreting cells (12, 23). Recent studies in SPOC1 cells suggested that PMA-induced mucin secretion from airway goblet cells is dependent on local Ca2+ gradients (39); thus we monitored Ca
after exposure to PMA in HBE cells. HBE cells were exposed first to ATP
S and, after washout of agonist, to PMA, in a dose that maximally activates mucin secretion (300 nM; Refs. 2, 11). PMA elicited a small, significant elevation in Ca
peak of which was 27.1 ± 7% of the ATP
S control peak (P < 0.05; Fig. 7). As an independent check on the significance of this change, we examined the slope of the Ca
vs. time relationship immediately after the addition of PMA by regression analysis and found it also to be significant. In three experiments each, the PMA-induced Ca2+ increase was found not to be affected by either the inhibition of PLC by U-7312 or the removal of Ca
(data not shown).
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| DISCUSSION |
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S-induced Ca2+ response in HBE cells.
Basal Ca2+ in resting human airway goblet cells was
110 nM and prolonged exposure to a P2Y2 receptor agonist, ATP
S (100 µM), caused Ca
to increase to a peak value of
260 nM (Fig. 2). This value is similar to those previously observed in human nasal (32), tracheal (27) and bronchial (37) epithelial cells. The ATP-induced Ca2+ peak response was followed by a sustained plateau phase where Ca2+ was higher than the initial baseline levels by 38.2 ± 11.9%, again similar to studies in human airway epithelial cell cultures (27, 32, 37). Interestingly, the time course of the goblet cell Ca2+ response to purinergic agonist was also similar to that of other airway epithelial cells (27, 32, 37), suggesting a basic commonality in the Ca2+ signaling system of the different cell types.
Important to our experimental strategy, successive 5-min exposures to ATP
S, separated by a 15-min washout, elicited comparable responses (Fig. 3), suggesting that the cells were capable of generating a full Ca2+ response shortly after a previous exposure. In previous work (e.g., Ref. 11), we found that long initial exposures to saturating amounts of agonist lead to poor mucin secretory responses on rechallenge. This poor second response is likely due to goblet cell stores being depleted over the first 2030 min of initial agonist exposure (see Ref. 22). Hence, in the present studies we kept the exposures to agonist brief to avoid excessive depletion of mucin stores.
P2Y2 receptors typically couple to PLC (18), and as therefore expected Ca2+, IP3, and PMA all stimulate mucin secretion (1, 2, 11, 22, 26, 39). Thus we tested whether PLC inhibition affects the ATP
S-induced Ca2+ response in human airway goblet cells and found that the phosphatidylinositol-specific PLC inhibitor U-73122 nearly abolished ATP
S-induced Ca2+ response in goblet cells (Fig. 4, B and C). The phosphatidylcholine-specific PLC inhibitor D-609 had no effect on Ca
(Fig. 4, A and C), a result that stands in contrast to its recently reported inhibitory effects on ATP-induced mucin secretion from HBE cells (22). Other studies with PLC inhibitors in airway epithelia generally support the notion that U-73122 inhibits cellular responses to ATP, including inhibition of Ca
in rabbit tracheal epithelial cells (14) and of mucin secretion in human tracheobronchial epithelial cells (9). Hence, the Ca2+ response caused by exposure of HBE goblet cells to ATP
S most likely activates PLC, with a subsequent, sequential liberation of IP3 to the cytosol and mobilization of Ca2+ from the intracellular stores.
Requirement for Ca
.
The requirement for Ca2+ in regulated exocytosis can be traced back to original work on the neuromuscular junction, where it was shown that removal of Ca
inhibited synaptic transmission (21). The Ca2+ dependence of regulated exocytosis was later confirmed in nonexcitable secretory cells subjected to various membrane permeabilization procedures (e.g., Refs. 5, 6), but it was only studies enabled by the development of Ca2+-sensitive fluorescent dyes that revealed that these cells secreted in response to agonist, in the absence of Ca
(e.g., Refs. 16, 20). Hence, our findings that removal of Ca
had no significant effect on the response of goblet cells to ATP
S (Fig. 5) is consistent with work on regulated exocytosis in other secretory cells. It is interesting, however, that a recent report suggests that Ca2+ entry across the apical membrane of HT-29 cells influences the kinetics of mucin granule exocytosis: removing Ca
caused a delay in the Ca
transient and strongly attenuated the peak change in membrane capacitance (7, 27). Because increases in membrane capacitance equate to exocytotic events only during the initial phase of a secretory response, i.e., before significant amounts of membrane are lost to endocytic retrieval, the dependence of HT-29 cell mucin secretion on Ca
over exposures longer than the first 30 s or so is uncertain. Our results with HBE cells (Fig. 4) suggest that any dependence of a full mucin secretory response on external Ca2+ is likely a modest one.
PMA-related Ca2+ release.
Previous studies in our laboratory (2, 11) showed that PMA elicits mucin secretion in SPOC1 and HBE cells. In SPOC1 cells, PMA likely activates PKC and other proteins to stimulate mucin secretion: PMA caused the translocation of PKC and small increases in mucin secretion at doses <30 nM, whereas the major effects of PMA to stimulate mucin secretion occurred at higher doses, between 100 and 1,000 nM (1). Initial studies using EGTA to probe the relationship between PMA and Ca2+ (ionomycin) effects in SPOC1 cells permeabilized with streptolysin O suggested that PMA-induced mucin secretion in SPOC1 cells was independent of Ca2+ (40). Using the faster binding kinetics of BAPTA, however, we later found (39) that PMA-induced mucin secretion in SPOC1 cells was dependent on local Ca2+ gradients. Therefore, we monitored the Ca
response following exposure to maximal doses of PMA in goblet cells and found that the PMA-related Ca2+ increase was small (27.1 ± 7%), compared with the ATP
S-induced Ca2+ response (Fig. 7). The change was too small to reflect a full, agonist-like effect on Ca
mobilization. One explanation for this diminutive change in Ca2+ is that PMA triggers generation of localized Ca2+ gradients at the apical membrane that are barely detectable above the basal, whole cell fluorescence collected by wide-field microscopy. Interestingly, our recent permeabilized SPOC1 cell studies (39) provided evidence for such a local Ca2+ release: PMA stimulated mucin granule exocytosis that depended on local, IP3-independent Ca2+ gradients. The Ca2+ transient induced by PMA in the present study (Fig. 7) was observed regardless of whether Ca
was removed or PLC was inhibited, suggesting that Ca2+ is released from an intracellular store, independent of IP3. Interestingly, there is precedence for local Ca2+ release from yeast vacuoles occurring before the final stage of exocytotic membrane fusion (34), which suggests that an IP3-independent mechanism may exist to trigger local Ca2+ release from vesicles that serves to trigger exocytosis (see Ref. 39). However, it is also possible that PMA stimulates a local Ca2+ release from elements of the endoplasmic reticulum in close juxtaposition to the granule and plasma membranes (33).
In summary, Ca2+ signaling in human goblet cells after purinergic stimulation follows the classic paradigm of a Ca
transient with a peak response of
2.4-fold over a basal activity of 110 nM, followed by a long superbasal plateau. The rise in Ca
appears to result from a mobilization of intracellular stores, because the transient was nearly abolished by inhibition of PLC and was not affected significantly by removal of Ca
. Finally, in contrast to the massive effects of PMA on mucin secretion, phorbol ester stimulates but a small, brief rise in Ca
. This effect of PMA on Ca
may relate more directly to the exocytotic mechanism than to a direct effect of the compound on a Ca2+ release mechanism.
| GRANTS |
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| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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| FOOTNOTES |
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The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. The article must therefore be hereby marked "advertisement" in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.
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signaling. J Biol Chem 280:1020210209, 2005.This article has been cited by other articles:
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