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1Department of Medicine, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois; and 2Department of Psychiatry, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, New York
Submitted 5 December 2005 ; accepted in final form 8 April 2006
Calcium-binding proteins regulate transcription and secretion of pancreatic islet hormones. Here, we demonstrate neuroendocrine expression of the calcium-binding downstream regulatory element antagonistic modulator (DREAM) and its role in glucose-dependent regulation of prodynorphin (PDN) expression. DREAM is distributed throughout
- and
-cells in both the nucleus and cytoplasm. As DREAM regulates neuronal dynorphin expression, we determined whether this pathway is affected in DREAM/ islets. Under low glucose conditions, with intracellular calcium concentrations of <100 nM, DREAM/ islets had an 80% increase in PDN message compared with controls. Accordingly, DREAM interacts with the PDN promoter downstream regulatory element (DRE) under low calcium (<100 nM) conditions, inhibiting PDN transcription in
-cells. Furthermore,
-cells treated with high glucose (20 mM) show increased cytoplasmic calcium (
200 nM), which eliminates DREAM's interaction with the DRE, causing increased PDN promoter activity. As PDN is cleaved into dynorphin peptides, which stimulate
-opioid receptors expressed predominantly in
-cells of the islet, we determined the role of dynorphin A-(117) in glucagon secretion from the
-cell. Stimulation with dynorphin A-(117) caused
-cell calcium fluctuations and a significant increase in glucagon release. DREAM/ islets also show elevated glucagon secretion in low glucose compared with controls. These results demonstrate that PDN transcription is regulated by DREAM in a calcium-dependent manner and suggest a role for dynorphin regulation of
-cell glucagon secretion. The data provide a molecular basis for opiate stimulation of glucagon secretion first observed over 25 years ago.
calsenilin; potassium channel interacting protein; neuroendocrine; glucagon; dynorphin
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