RESUMO
Resolution of alveolar edema depends on active ion transport by sodium pumps located on the basolateral surface of alveolar epithelial cells (AECs), suggesting that upregulation of sodium pump activity may facilitate clearance of edema fluid. We have investigated the use of lentiviral vectors to augment sodium pump activity via gene transfer of sodium pump subunits to AECs. Full-length cDNA for the alpha(1) or beta(1) subunit of rat Na(+),K(+)-ATPase was cloned into the lentiviral vector pRRLsin.hCMV.IRES.EGFP. Rat AECs in primary culture were transduced on day 4 with lentiviral vectors pseudotyped with vesicular stomatitis virus glycoprotein G. Transduction with lentiviral vectors encoding either alpha(1) subunit (Lenti-alpha(1)-EGFP) or beta(1) subunit (Lenti-beta(1)-EGFP) led to dose-dependent increases in mRNA and protein for the corresponding subunit. Transduction with Lenti-beta(1)-EGFP was accompanied by coordinate upregulation of endogenous alpha(1) expression, whereas endogenous beta(1) expression was unchanged after transduction with Lenti-alpha(1)-EGFP. Consistent with these findings, transduction with Lenti-beta(1)-EGFP, but not Lenti-alpha(1)-EGFP, led to augmentation of sodium pump activity as a result of increases in Na(+),K(+)-ATPase holoenzyme. Sodium pump alpha(2) subunit and sodium channel protein did not change after Lenti-beta(1)-EGFP transduction. These results demonstrate that overall sodium pump activity can be efficiently upregulated in AECs specifically via gene transfer of the sodium pump beta(1) subunit and support the feasibility of lentivirus-mediated gene transfer to augment alveolar fluid clearance.
Assuntos
Técnicas de Transferência de Genes , Lentivirus/genética , Alvéolos Pulmonares/fisiologia , ATPase Trocadora de Sódio-Potássio , Regulação para Cima , Animais , Células Cultivadas , Células Epiteliais/citologia , Células Epiteliais/fisiologia , Células Epiteliais/virologia , Genes Reporter , Vetores Genéticos , Proteínas de Fluorescência Verde , Proteínas Luminescentes/metabolismo , Masculino , Glicoproteínas de Membrana , Alvéolos Pulmonares/citologia , Alvéolos Pulmonares/virologia , RNA Mensageiro/biossíntese , Ratos , Ratos Sprague-Dawley , Proteínas Recombinantes/química , Proteínas Recombinantes/metabolismo , Sódio/metabolismo , ATPase Trocadora de Sódio-Potássio/química , ATPase Trocadora de Sódio-Potássio/genética , ATPase Trocadora de Sódio-Potássio/metabolismo , ATPase Trocadora de Sódio-Potássio/fisiologia , Transdução Genética , Proteínas do Envelope ViralRESUMO
We have developed a novel vector system that uses a helper-dependent adenoviral vector as a carrier to deliver a fully functional retrovirus vector. The helper-dependent adenovirus (HDAd) can accommodate large inserts, provide high titers, and infect nondividing as well as dividing cells. However, adenoviral DNA is rarely integrated into the host cell genome, and its episomal expression is transient. Therefore we inserted a replication-competent, ecotropic retrovirus vector containing the green fluorescent protein (GFP) reporter gene as a second-stage component. The well-characterized host species tropism of each vector component provided a stringent biological assay system that demonstrates the two-stage transduction mechanism of the hybrid vector, because the adenovirus stage can efficiently transduce human cells but cannot replicate in murine cells, and conversely, the ecotropic retrovirus stage cannot enter human cells but can efficiently proliferate in murine cells, resulting in permanent integration and progressive spread of reporter gene expression.
