Endothelial Pannexin 1-TRPV4 channel signaling lowers pulmonary arterial pressure in mice

  1. Zdravka Daneva
  2. Matteo Ottolini
  3. Yen Lin Chen
  4. Eliska Klimentova
  5. Maniselvan Kuppusamy
  6. Soham A Shah
  7. Richard D Minshall
  8. Cheikh I Seye
  9. Victor E Laubach
  10. Brant E Isakson
  11. Swapnil K Sonkusare  Is a corresponding author
  1. University of Virginia, United States
  2. University of Illinois, United States
  3. University of Missouri, United States

Abstract

Pannexin 1 (Panx1), an ATP-efflux pathway, has been linked with inflammation in pulmonary capillaries. However, the physiological roles of endothelial Panx1 in the pulmonary vasculature are unknown. Endothelial transient receptor potential vanilloid 4 (TRPV4) channels lower pulmonary artery (PA) contractility and exogenous ATP activates of endothelial TRPV4 channels. We hypothesized that endothelial Panx1-ATP-TRPV4 channel signaling promotes vasodilation and lowers pulmonary arterial pressure (PAP). Endothelial, but not smooth muscle, knockout of Panx1 increased PA contractility and raised PAP in mice. Flow/shear stress increased ATP efflux through endothelial Panx1 in PAs. Panx1-effluxed extracellular ATP signaled through purinergic P2Y2 receptor (P2Y2R) to activate protein kinase Ca (PKCa), which in turn activated endothelial TRPV4 channels. Finally, caveolin-1 provided a signaling scaffold for endothelial Panx1, P2Y2R, PKCa, and TRPV4 channels in PAs, promoting their spatial proximity and enabling signaling interactions. These results indicate that endothelial Panx1-P2Y2R-TRPV4 channel signaling, facilitated by caveolin-1, reduces PA contractility and lowers PAP in mice.

Data availability

All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in the manuscript. Individual numeric values are shown in the scatterplots for each dataset. An excel sheet with source data for Figure 1J has been provided.

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Zdravka Daneva

    Robert M. Berne Cardiovascular Research Center, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  2. Matteo Ottolini

    Robert M. Berne Cardiovascular Research Center, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Yen Lin Chen

    Robert M. Berne Cardiovascular Research Center, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Eliska Klimentova

    Robert M. Berne Cardiovascular Research Center, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  5. Maniselvan Kuppusamy

    Robert M. Berne Cardiovascular Research Center, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  6. Soham A Shah

    Biomedical Engineering, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  7. Richard D Minshall

    Pharmacology, University of Illinois, Chicago, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  8. Cheikh I Seye

    Biochemistry, University of Missouri, Columbia, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  9. Victor E Laubach

    Surgery, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  10. Brant E Isakson

    Department of Molecular Physiology and Biological Physics, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  11. Swapnil K Sonkusare

    Robert M. Berne Cardiovascular Research Center, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, United States
    For correspondence
    swapnil.sonkusare@virginia.edu
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-9587-9342

Funding

National Institutes of Health (HL146914)

  • Swapnil K Sonkusare

National Institutes of Health (HL142808)

  • Swapnil K Sonkusare

National Institutes of Health (HL157407)

  • Victor E Laubach
  • Swapnil K Sonkusare

National Institutes of Health (P01HL120840)

  • Brant E Isakson

National Institutes of Health (HL137112)

  • Brant E Isakson

National Institutes of Health (R01HL133293)

  • Victor E Laubach

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Animal experimentation: All animal protocols were approved by the University of Virginia Animal Care and Use Committee (protocols 4100 and 4120). This study was performed in strict accordance with the recommendations in the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals of the National Institutes of Health. For surgical procedures, every effort was made to minimize suffering.

Copyright

© 2021, Daneva 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.

Metrics

  • 1,695
    views
  • 240
    downloads
  • 40
    citations

Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.

Download links

A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.

Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)

Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)

Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)

  1. Zdravka Daneva
  2. Matteo Ottolini
  3. Yen Lin Chen
  4. Eliska Klimentova
  5. Maniselvan Kuppusamy
  6. Soham A Shah
  7. Richard D Minshall
  8. Cheikh I Seye
  9. Victor E Laubach
  10. Brant E Isakson
  11. Swapnil K Sonkusare
(2021)
Endothelial Pannexin 1-TRPV4 channel signaling lowers pulmonary arterial pressure in mice
eLife 10:e67777.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.67777

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.67777

Further reading

    1. Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
    2. Genetics and Genomics
    Conor J Howard, Nathan S Abell ... Nathan B Lubock
    Research Article

    Deep Mutational Scanning (DMS) is an emerging method to systematically test the functional consequences of thousands of sequence changes to a protein target in a single experiment. Because of its utility in interpreting both human variant effects and protein structure-function relationships, it holds substantial promise to improve drug discovery and clinical development. However, applications in this domain require improved experimental and analytical methods. To address this need, we report novel DMS methods to precisely and quantitatively interrogate disease-relevant mechanisms, protein-ligand interactions, and assess predicted response to drug treatment. Using these methods, we performed a DMS of the melanocortin-4 receptor (MC4R), a G-protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) implicated in obesity and an active target of drug development efforts. We assessed the effects of >6600 single amino acid substitutions on MC4R’s function across 18 distinct experimental conditions, resulting in >20 million unique measurements. From this, we identified variants that have unique effects on MC4R-mediated Gαs- and Gαq-signaling pathways, which could be used to design drugs that selectively bias MC4R’s activity. We also identified pathogenic variants that are likely amenable to a corrector therapy. Finally, we functionally characterized structural relationships that distinguish the binding of peptide versus small molecule ligands, which could guide compound optimization. Collectively, these results demonstrate that DMS is a powerful method to empower drug discovery and development.

    1. Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
    Meina He, Yongxin Tao ... Wenli Chen
    Research Article

    Copper is an essential enzyme cofactor in bacteria, but excess copper is highly toxic. Bacteria can cope with copper stress by increasing copper resistance and initiating chemorepellent response. However, it remains unclear how bacteria coordinate chemotaxis and resistance to copper. By screening proteins that interacted with the chemotaxis kinase CheA, we identified a copper-binding repressor CsoR that interacted with CheA in Pseudomonas putida. CsoR interacted with the HPT (P1), Dimer (P3), and HATPase_c (P4) domains of CheA and inhibited CheA autophosphorylation, resulting in decreased chemotaxis. The copper-binding of CsoR weakened its interaction with CheA, which relieved the inhibition of chemotaxis by CsoR. In addition, CsoR bound to the promoter of copper-resistance genes to inhibit gene expression, and copper-binding released CsoR from the promoter, leading to increased gene expression and copper resistance. P. putida cells exhibited a chemorepellent response to copper in a CheA-dependent manner, and CsoR inhibited the chemorepellent response to copper. Besides, the CheA-CsoR interaction also existed in proteins from several other bacterial species. Our results revealed a mechanism by which bacteria coordinately regulated chemotaxis and resistance to copper by CsoR.