Glycine enhances microglial intracellular calcium signaling. A role for sodium-coupled neutral amino acid transporters.

The inhibitory neurotransmitter glycine is known to enhance microglial nitric oxide production. However, up to now, the mechanism is undocumented. Since calcium is an important second messenger in both immune and glial cells, we studied the effects of glycine on intracellular calcium signaling. We found that millimolar concentrations of glycine enhance microglial intracellular calcium transients induced by 100 µM ATP or by 500 nM thapsigargin. This modulation was unaffected by the glycine receptor antagonist strychnine and could not be mimicked by glycine receptor agonists such as taurine or ß-alanine, indicating glycine receptor independency. The modulation of calcium responses could be mimicked by several structurally related amino acids (e.g., serine, alanine, or glutamine) and was inhibited in the presence of the neutral amino acid transporter substrate α-aminoisobutyric acid (AIB). We correlated these findings to immunofluorescence glycine uptake experiments which showed a clear glycine uptake which was inhibited by AIB. Furthermore, all amino acids that were shown to modulate calcium responses also evoked AIB-sensitive inward currents, mainly carried by sodium, as demonstrated by patch clamp experiments. Based on these findings, we propose that sodium-coupled neutral amino acid transporters are responsible for the observed glycine modulation of intracellular calcium responses.

Morphological changes do not reflect biochemical and functional differentiation in OLN-93 oligodendroglial cells.

OLN-93 cells, a cell line established from spontaneously transformed rat brain glial cultures, are used as a model for oligodendrocytes. These cells are known to undergo morphological changes upon serum deprivation. The objective of the present study is to investigate a possible correlation between these morphological changes and (1) the loss or gain of oligodendrocyte markers and (2) the electrophysiological properties of these cells. Using RT-PCR and immunocytochemistry, we demonstrate that the OLN-93 cell line expresses a broad range of markers (NG2, CNP, MAG, MOG) both when cultured in medium containing 10% or 0.5% fetal calf serum. Whole-cell patch-clamp recordings demonstrate that, regardless of the culture conditions, OLN-93 cells mainly express delayed-rectifying K+ currents, a characteristic of immature oligodendrocytes. These currents are in part mediated by the shaker family of voltage-gated potassium channels. Kv1.1 and Kv1.3-expression are present at the mRNA and at the protein levels, and functional evidence for Kv1.3 mediated currents was obtained by using the selective blocker margatoxin. Under low serum conditions, OLN-93 cells exhibit differentiation-like morphological changes. However, we provide evidence that these morphological modifications do not necessarily correlate with biochemical or functional changes. Based on these data, we conclude that the OLN-93 cell line can be situated at a developmental stage between a late pre-oligodendrocyte and a late immature oligodendrocyte, regardless of serum concentration.