Protein Kinase D In Keratinocyte Maturation

Abstract

The epidermis is important for the body's maintenance of water homeostasis and resistance to environmental stress, and the m ajor cell type of the epidermis is the keratinocyte. Keratinocyte maturation requires proliferation, followed by terminal differentiation, and diseases of the skin often exhibit deregulated epidermal maturation. Protein kinase D (PKD) expression correlates with proliferation in keratinocytes, and PKD activation occurs in response to mitogen stimulation in other cell types. W e have hypothesized that PKD functions as a pro-proliferative and/or anti-differentiative signal in primary mouse keratinocytes and have predicted that agents that stimulate differentiation might also initiate a reduction in PKD expression and/or activation to allow differentiation to proceed. Thus, changes in PKD levels, autophosphorylation and activity were analyzed upon treatment with differentiating agents and with 1 2 -0 - tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate, TPA, which stimulates differentiation acutely and proliferation chronically. 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 -, elevated extracellular calcium-, and acute TPA-induced differentiation down-modulated PKD levels and autophosphorylation at serine 916. In addition, elevated extracellular calcium- and acute TPA-induced differentiation down-modulated PKD activity. Chronic TPA treatment stimulated proliferation and caused a recovery o f PKD levels, autophosphorylation and activity. In co-transfection experiments in keratinocytes, co-expression of PKD increased and decreased the promoter activities of keratin 5, a marker of proliferation, and involucrin, a marker of differentiation, respectively, and opposed the effects of elevated extracellular calcium on the expression of these markers. W hile cloning PKD for expression studies, we identified a splice variant of PKD, PKD{3, which is differentially spliced in a region important in activation and subcellular localization. Therefore, we hypothesized that this splice variant may have dissimilar activation properties and/or alternate roles in keratinocyte maturation. However, in vitro activation studies demonstrated equal activation of PK D a (full length) and PKDj3 by TPA and DAG. Co-transfection experiments showed that P K D a and PKDp affected marker expression to the same degree and similarly opposed the effects of elevated extracellular calcium-induced differentiation on marker expression. Our work represents the first demonstration of: 1) down-modulation o f PKD during differentiation, 2) pro-proliferative/anti-differentiative effects of PKD on keratinocyte marker expression and 3) existence of a splice variant of PKD.