Profound regulation of Na/K pump activity by transient elevations of cytoplasmic calcium in murine cardiac myocytes
Abstract
Small changes of Na/K pump activity regulate internal Ca release in cardiac myocytes via Na/Ca exchange. We now show conversely that transient elevations of cytoplasmic Ca strongly regulate cardiac Na/K pumps. When cytoplasmic Na is submaximal, Na/K pump currents decay rapidly during extracellular K application and multiple results suggest that an inactivation mechanism is involved. Brief activation of Ca influx by reverse Na/Ca exchange enhances pump currents and attenuates current decay, while repeated Ca elevations suppress pump currents. Pump current enhancement reverses over 3 min, and results are similar in myocytes lacking the regulatory protein, phospholemman. Classical signaling mechanisms, including Ca-activated protein kinases and reactive oxygen, are evidently not involved. Electrogenic signals mediated by intramembrane movement of hydrophobic ions, such as hexyltriphenylphosphonium (C6TPP), increase and decrease in parallel with pump currents. Thus, transient Ca elevation and Na/K pump inactivation cause opposing sarcolemma changes that may affect diverse membrane processes.
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Author details
Funding
NIH Office of the Director (RO1 #1129843)
- Donald W Hilgemann
Endowed Professor Collaborative Research Support, Charles and Jane Pak Center of Mineral Metabolism and Clinical Research (Collaborative Research Support)
- Donald W Hilgemann
American Heart Association (Fellowship #30950013)
- Christine Deisl
The funder (NIH) had no role in study design, data collection, interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: All experiments were performed in strict accordance with the recommendations in the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals of the National Institutes of Health. All of the animals were handled according to approved institutional animal care and use committee (IACUC) protocols. The protocol was approved by the Committee on the Ethics of Animal Experiments of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical center at Dallas (Protocol Number: 2015-101114). Euthanasia was performed with flurane and every effort was made to minimize suffering.
Copyright
© 2016, Lu et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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