Regulation of gene expression in rat hepatocytes and hepatoma cells by insulin: quantitation of messenger ribonucleic acid's coding for tyrosine aminotransferase, tryptophan oxygenase, and phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase.

The effect of insulin on the abundance of mRNAs coding for tyrosine aminotransferase (TAT; EC 2.6.1.5), tryptophan oxygenase (TO; EC 1.13.1.12), and P-enolpyruvate carboxykinase(GTP) (PEPCK; EC 4.1.1.32) was examined in primary cultures of adult rat hepatocytes and in FTO-2B rat hepatoma cells by Northern blot analysis using RNA probes made from SP6-cDNAs. Insulin (10(-11)-10(-7) M), which has been reported to induce TAT and decrease the activity of TO, did not change the levels of TAT mRNA and TO mRNA in hepatocytes regardless of the presence of other inducers. In the same cells, dexamethasone increased TAT mRNA up to 19-fold and TO mRNA up to 15-fold, and 8pClPhS-cAMP (CPT-cAMP) raised the level of TAT mRNA up to 36-fold. The abundance of TO mRNA was not altered by CPT-cAMP. In contrast to TAT mRNA and TO mRNA, the level of PEPCK mRNA was dramatically decreased by insulin in the same hepatocytes. The sensitivity to this inhibitory effect of insulin was enhanced by dexamethasone and reduced by CPT-cAMP. FTO-2B hepatoma cells, which do not express detectable levels of TO mRNA, showed responses similar to those of hepatocytes, except that insulin caused a moderate reduction in TAT mRNA, but only in the presence of CPT-cAMP. The PEPCK mRNA in FTO-2B cells was suppressed by insulin in a manner closely resembling the effects in hepatocytes in the present study and in H4IIE hepatoma cells previously reported.