|
|
|
||||
| Home Help Feedback Subscriptions Archive Search Table of Contents | |||||
First published online 22 April 2008
doi: 10.1242/jcs.015958
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Short Report |

1 National Institute for Medical Research, The Ridgeway, Mill Hill, London, NW7 1AA, UK
2 Department of Cell Biology, University Medical Center Utrecht (UMCU), Rm G02.525, Heidelberglaan 100, 3584CX Utrecht, The Netherlands
Author for correspondence (e-mail: jvincent{at}nimr.mrc.ac.uk)
Accepted 3 March 2008
Summary
Two lipids (palmitate and palmitoleic acid) are appended onto Wnt proteins. It has been suggested that palmitate is required for signalling, whereas palmitoleic acid is necessary for progression through the secretory pathway. By mutating the relevant amino acids, we have investigated how these adducts contribute to the secretion and signalling activity of Wingless, the main Drosophila member of the Wnt family. Analysis of Wingless with a Cysteine 93 to Alanine mutation ([C93A]Wingless) shows that palmitoylation is essential for signalling activity in vivo (as well as in cultured cells). Moreover, without palmitate, Wingless fails to reach the surface of imaginal disc cells and, as electron microscopy (EM) analysis suggests, appears to accumulate in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). Artificial targeting of palmitate-deficient Wingless to the plasma membrane does not rescue signalling activity. Therefore, palmitate at C93 has a dual role: in secretion and signalling. From our analysis of [S239A]Wingless, which lacks a conserved residue shown to be acylated in Wnt3a, we infer that palmitoleic acid is not, as previously suggested, absolutely required for secretion. Nevertheless, this mutant has poor signalling activity, suggesting that palmitoleic acid contributes significantly to signalling. We suggest that the overall level of lipidation affects signalling activity.
Key words: Wingless, Drosophila, Secretion, Acylation, Morphogen
Introduction
Lipid modification has recently emerged as an important feature of several signalling molecules. Lipid-modified secreted proteins include the members of the Hedgehog (Hh) and Wnt families, and, as shown recently, the Drosophila homologue of TGF
, Spitz (Spi) (Miura and Treisman, 2006
). Two distinct lipids are appended on Hh proteins: palmitate at the N-terminus and cholesterol at the C-terminus (Pepinsky et al., 1998
); however, so far, Wnts and Spi are only known to be acylated (Willert et al., 2003
; Miura et al., 2006
; Takada et al., 2006
). The hydrophobic nature of secreted lipoproteins raises interesting questions concerning progression through the secretory pathway, release from the surface of producing cells and transport to distant cells within a tissue. In this paper, we investigate how lipid modifications affects the secretion and signalling activity of Wingless, a Drosophila member of the Wnt family.
Two lipids have been shown to be appended onto Wnts: a palmitate on a cysteine and a palmitoleic acid on a serine. Palmitoylation at cysteine 93 (C93) of Wingless has been demonstrated by Willert et al. (Willert et al., 2003
). The corresponding residue of mouse Wnt3a (C77) is also palmitoylated, suggesting that this modification is conserved. Indeed, replacement of this residue by alanine (C93A in Drosophila or C77A in the murine protein) leads to near complete loss of signalling activity in a cell-based assay (Willert et al., 2003
). Recently, it has been shown that Wnt1 and Wnt5a are also palmitoylated and that this modification is essential for the signalling activity of this Wnt family member (Galli et al., 2007
; Kurayoshi et al., 2007
; Miura and Treisman, 2006
). Because overexpressed [C77A]Wnt3A has residual activity in an autocrine-cell-based assay, it has been suggested that palmitoylation might not be essential for signalling activity per se but would rather be needed to concentrate the signal at cell membranes. Indeed, in the absence of palmitate at C77, Wnt3a becomes more soluble in aqueous media (Willert et al., 2003
).
In a recent study, Takada et al. showed that Wnt3a is acylated at a second residue: Serine 209 (S209) is modified with palmitoleic acid (Takada et al., 2006
). Because this residue is conserved, it is likely that the same modification takes place in Drosophila (at position 239). Importantly, Takada et al. show that, without this modification, Wnt3a is no longer secreted. Because [C77A]Wnt3a is secreted, at least in a cell-based assay (Willert et al., 2003
), Takada et al. suggest that the two lipids on Wnt3a could serve distinct functions, with palmitic acid on C77 being involved in signalling activity and palmitoleic acid at S209 being required for progression through the secretory pathway.
In this study we use wing imaginal discs of Drosophila as an in vivo system in which to study the role of the acyl groups at C93 and S239 in Wingless. During the third-instar larval stage, Wingless is normally expressed in a row of cells that bisects the disc along the dorsoventral boundary. From there, it spreads throughout most of the presumptive wing region, where it binds to receptors of the Frizzled family (mainly Frizzled 2; Fz2) and activates downstream signalling. We find that, in imaginal discs, lipid modification at S239 is not absolutely required for secretion or membrane association but contributes to signalling activity. By contrast, mutation of C93 (no palmitoylation) causes inefficient exit from the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and abrogates signalling. Our results suggest that dual lipidation is required for signalling activity. Lipidation also contributes to trafficking through the secretory pathway, although, in Drosophila Wingless, the role of palmitate predominates over that of palmitoleic acid, whereas the contrary is true for mammalian Wnt3a.
Results and Discussion
Acylation is required for signalling activity in vitro and in vivo
As reported by Galli et al. (Galli et al., 2007
), Willert et al. (Willert et al., 2003
) and Kurayoshi et al. (Kurayoshi et al., 2007
), respectively, palmitoylation of Wnt1, Wnt3a and Wnt5a at an N-terminal cysteine is essential for signalling activity. We found that a mutation at the corresponding site in Wingless (C93A) abolishes signalling activity in cultured Drosophila S2 cells. S2 cells were co-transfected with a Fz2-expressing plasmid, a reporter plasmid (topflash) and a plasmid encoding either wild-type Wingless or [C93A]Wingless. A plasmid constitutively expressing Renilla luciferase was also included for normalisation and to provide a measure of cell health. Normally, three different forms of Wingless, representing different levels of glycosylation, can be distinguished by western blot (Tanaka et al., 2002
). We found that [C93A]Wingless is also present in three forms (Fig. 1A), suggesting that it is expressed and modified normally. Nevertheless, C93A did not show any significant signalling activity (Fig. 1B). Using similar assays, we found that [S239A]Wingless is also modified normally by disc cells (Fig. 1A). Surprisingly, considering that [S209A]Wnt3a is inactive (Takada et al., 2006
), [S239A]Wingless was found to have residual signalling activity (Fig. 1B).
|
Distribution of [C93A]Wingless and [S239A]Wingless in imaginal discs
The distribution of wild-type Wingless, [S239A]Wingless or [C93A]Wingless was assessed by immunofluorescence following expression in imaginal discs with ap-Gal4. Using a conventional staining protocol that reveals both intra- and extra-cellular proteins, HA-tagged wild-type Wingless was detected in non-expressing cells, in which it is known to be internalised (top half of Fig. 1D) (see also Piddini et al., 2005
). By contrast, neither [S239A]Wingless nor [C93A]Wingless could be detected outside the expression domain (Fig. 1E,F). Therefore, reduction in lipidation prevents Wingless from reaching target cells. Using a staining protocol designed to reveal only extracellular proteins, we confirmed that wild-type Wingless accumulates at the surface of expressing cells (Strigini and Cohen, 2000
) (Fig. 1G,K). [S239A]Wingless also accumulated at the cell surface (Fig. 1H,L); hence, it must be able to progress through the secretory pathway. By contrast, no [C93A]Wingless could be detected at the surface of expressing imaginal disc cells (Fig. 1I,M). This suggests that secretion of this form of Wingless is impaired in vivo. Alternatively, [C93A]Wingless could be secreted but not retained at the cell surface. Overall, our in vivo results differ somewhat from those obtained in mammalian cell culture. In particular, in our assay, palmitate at C93 of Wingless appears to be more important for secretion than palmitoleic acid at S239.
|
[S239]Wingless and [C93A]Wingless are secreted by S2 cells
The absence of detectable HA-[C93A]Wingless at the surface of imaginal discs suggests that palmitoylation could be essential for secretion in vivo. Alternatively, as suggested above, [C93A]Wingless could be secreted but would not be detectable outside the expression domain because of lack of retention at the cell surface and rapid dilution in the extracellular space. Willert et al. (Willert et al., 2003
) favour the latter explanation because they found that palmitoylation-deficient Wnt3a is secreted by mammalian cells in culture. To measure the secretion of Wingless variants by Drosophila S2 cells, we generated fusion proteins with firefly luciferase, measured the amount of luciferase activity in the medium and normalised it to the total amount of luciferase activity that was produced. We found that luciferase-[C93A]Wingless as well as luciferase-[S239]Wingless are secreted into the medium to the same extent as luciferase-Wingless (Fig. 2A). Therefore, we conclude that lipid modifications are not essential for secretion of Wingless from Drosophila cells in culture.
Palmitoylation of Wingless at C93 promotes binding to Frizzled 2
As shown above, [C93A]Wingless had no signalling activity, even when it was forced to accumulate at the cell surface with an exogenous transmembrane domain. This could be because [C93A]Wingless has a reduced affinity for Fz2. No direct quantitative assay is yet available to measure the binding of Wingless to full-length Fz2. As an alternative, we adapted a paracrine signalling assay to infer binding information. In this assay, cells expressing HA-Wingless or HA-[C93A]Wingless were co-cultured with cells carrying a reporter plasmid, a Fz2-expressing plasmid and a plasmid expressing Histone-GFP. The latter construct was included so that receiving cells could be distinguished from Wingless-producing cells by fluorescence microscopy. Measurements of reporter activity with luciferase assays confirmed that HA-[C93A]Wingless does not trigger signalling, whereas HA-Wingless does (Fig. 2B). Furthermore, we confirmed that wild-type Wingless accumulates within non-expressing receiving cells (Fig. 2C,E), presumably following Fz2-mediated endocytosis (Piddini et al., 2005
). By contrast, HA-[C93A]Wingless could not be detected within receiving cells (Fig. 2D,F). One likely interpretation is that HA-[C93A]Wingless does not bind Fz2 and hence cannot be internalised.
We next investigated whether an interaction between Fz2 and [C93A]Wingless could be detected when these proteins are expressed in the same cells. This is a less stringent assay because it does not require the ligand to travel in the extracellular medium in order to find its receptor on non-expressing cells. We found that co-overexpression of Fz2 and [C93A]Wingless leads to some accumulation of [C93A]Wingless at the cell surface in S2 cells (not shown). This is also the case in imaginal discs. As shown in Fig. 2G-J, overexpression of Flag-tagged Fz2 renders HA-tagged [C93A]Wingless detectable by extracellular staining. One possibility is that exogenous Fz2 could help [C93A]Wingless overcome a block in secretion, perhaps escorting it to the cell surface. Alternatively, [C93A]Wingless could independently reach the cell surface and be retained by Fz2. In either case, the above results suggest that Fz2 can interact (directly or indirectly) with [C93A]Wingless but to a much weaker extent than with wild-type Wingless. Such reduced affinity could account for the loss of signalling activity.
|
0.000118). Therefore, we conclude that the absence of the palmitate moiety affects Wingless trafficking, although we cannot, at the light-microscope resolution, distinguish between effects on endocytosis or secretion. In order to characterise the trafficking differences between wild-type and [C93A]Wingless at the ultrastructural level, we turned to immuno-EM of imaginal disc cells. Strikingly, the overall number of gold particles in [C93A]Wingless-expressing cells was significantly higher than in cells expressing wild-type Wingless (Fig. 4A-D) even though the overall level of expression was the same for the two transgenes. Much of the [C93A]Wingless was in the ER (Fig. 4A,C). Indeed, quantitative analysis of the number of gold particles per unit of ER-membrane length revealed that [C93A]Wingless is present in the ER at a tenfold higher density than wild-type Wingless (compare overall staining in Fig. 4A,C and B,D). Wild-type Wingless was also enriched in the ER; however, it was consistently found at the plasma membrane, and particularly in MVBs (asterisk in Fig. 4G,H). In particular, despite showing frequent labelling for wild-type Wingless, MVBs were mostly devoid of [C93A]Wingless (asterisk in Fig. 4E,F). Because palmitate-deficient Wingless accumulates inside expressing cells, we conclude that, in vivo, the palmitate moiety is required for secretion. Most likely, the palmitate moiety is required for efficient transfer of Wingless from the ER to post-Golgi compartments.
|
Materials and Methods
Antibodies, plasmids and fly stocks
Primary antibodies used were mouse anti-Wingless 4D4 (prepared from cells obtained from the DSHB), mouse M2 anti-Flag (Sigma; 1/1000), mouse anti-HA 1.1 (Covance; 1/500), rabbit anti-HA (Y-11) (Santa Cruz Biotechnology; 1/1000), rabbit anti-GFP (Abcam; 1/2500). Secondary antibodies (all from Molecular Probes) were Alexa-Fluor-488-conjugated goat anti-rabbit (1/200), Alexa488-conjugated goat anti-mouse (1/200), Alexa594-conjugated goat and anti-mouse (1/200) and Alexa-Fluor-594-conjugated goat and anti-rabbit (1/200). Expression plasmids for in vitro studies were derived from pMT/V5-HisA (Invitrogen), which allows induction of expression with copper ions. Wingless fusion genes were generated by inserting DNA encoding HA or HA–firefly-luciferase into the unique PflMI site located near to the 5' end of the wingless ORF. The C93A and S239A mutations were introduced using the QuikChange site-directed mutagenesis kit from Stratagene according to the manufacturer's manual and verified by sequencing. The same protocol was used to introduce the C93A mutation in NRT-HA-Wingless (Struhl and Basler, 1993
). For expression in transgenic flies, the various constructs were transferred into the pUAST vector. We used fly stocks carrying the following transgenes: UAS-HA-Wingless and UAS-NRT-HA-Wingless (from G. Struhl, Columbia University, New York, NY), UAS-flag-Fz2 (Piddini et al., 2005
), UAS-GFP-Wingless (Pfeiffer et al., 2000
), ap-Gal4 and dpp-Gal4. UAS-HA-[C93]Wingless, UAS-NRT-HA-[C93]Wingless and UAS-HA-[S239]Wingless were generated for this study as described above. For co-overexpression of HA-Wingless and GFP-Wingless in larval ectodermal cells, we used wg-Gal4 as a driver and Tub-Gal80TS to prevent expression at embryonic stages, thus overcoming premature lethality. Larvae were switched to 29°C at the end of first instar to activate Gal4-dependent expression.
Immuno-EM
Larvae were inverted in Ringer solution and fixed in 2% PFA and 0.2% glutaraldehyde in 0.1 M phosphate buffer (PB), pH 7.4, for 3 hours at room temperature. After washing in PBS, larvae were kept in 1% PFA/PBS at 4°C. Subsequently, wing discs were dissected, embedded in 12% gelatin, mounted on aluminium pins and frozen in liquid nitrogen. Wing discs were then cut along the anteroposterior axis on a Reichert Ultracut S cryotome at –120°C. Antibody- and gold-labelling procedures were performed as described previously (Slot et al., 1991
). 60-nm-thick cryosections were incubated with monoclonal anti-HA antibodies (clone 12CA5, Boehringer Mannheim). Anti-HA antibodies were detected with rabbit anti-mouse IgG (DakoCytomation Denmark A/S, Glostrup, Denmark) followed by protein A conjugated to 10- or 15-nm gold particles.
Cell culture, transfection and luciferase assay
S2 cells were cultured at 25°C in Schneider's complete medium supplemented with FCS to a 10% final concentration. The calcium phosphate transfection kit from Invitrogen was used according to the manufacturer's protocol. Cells were induced by overnight treatment with copper sulfate to a final concentration of 100 µM. A luminometer (TD-20/20) and the Promega Dual-Luciferase reporter assay system were used to measure the luciferase activities of firefly luciferase and Renilla luciferase. All the experiments were performed at least three times, and each time at least in triplicate.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the UK's Medical Research Council, the Endotrack programme of the European Union (F.W. and J.-P.V.) and the Dutch Cancer Society (grant number UU 2006-3508 to M.M.M.). We thank Cyrille Alexandre for help with transgenesis, Gary Struhl for plasmids and the Developmental Studies Hybridoma Bank for antibodies.
Footnotes
Supplementary material available online at http://jcs.biologists.org/cgi/content/full/121/10/1587/DC1
* These authors contributed equally to this work ![]()
References
Banziger, C., Soldini, D., Schutt, C., Zipperlen, P., Hausmann, G. and Basler, K. (2006). Wntless, a conserved membrane protein dedicated to the secretion of Wnt proteins from signaling cells. Cell 125, 509-522.[CrossRef][Medline]
Bartscherer, K., Pelte, N., Ingelfinger, D. and Boutros, M. (2006). Secretion of Wnt ligands requires Evi, a conserved transmembrane protein. Cell 125, 523-533.[CrossRef][Medline]
Galli, L. M., Barnes, T. L., Secrest, S. S., Kadowaki, T. and Burrus, L. W. (2007). Porcupine-mediated lipid-modification regulates the activity and distribution of Wnt proteins in the chick neural tube. Development 134, 3339-3348.
Goodman, R. M., Thombre, S., Firtina, Z., Gray, D., Betts, D., Roebuck, J., Spana, E. P. and Selva, E. M. (2006). Sprinter: a novel transmembrane protein required for Wg secretion and signaling. Development 133, 4901-4911.
Greaves, S., Sanson, B., White, P. and Vincent, J. P. (1999). A screen for identifying genes interacting with armadillo, the Drosophila homolog of beta-catenin. Genetics 153, 1753-1766.
Kurayoshi, M., Yamamoto, H., Izumi, S. and Kikuchi, A. (2007). Post-translational palmitoylation and glycosylation of Wnt-5a are necessary for its signalling. Biochem. J. 402, 515-523.[CrossRef][Medline]
Miura, G. I. and Treisman, J. E. (2006). Lipid modification of secreted signaling proteins. Cell Cycle 5, 1184-1188.[Medline]
Miura, G. I., Buglino, J., Alvarado, D., Lemmon, M. A., Resh, M. D. and Treisman, J. E. (2006). Palmitoylation of the EGFR ligand Spitz by Rasp increases Spitz activity by restricting its diffusion. Dev. Cell 10, 167-176.[CrossRef][Medline]
Pepinsky, R. B., Zeng, C., Wen, D., Rayhorn, P., Baker, D. P., Williams, K. P., Bixler, S. A., Ambrose, C. M., Garber, E. A., Miatkowski, K. et al. (1998). Identification of a palmitic acid-modified form of human Sonic hedgehog. J. Biol. Chem. 273, 14037-14045.
Pfeiffer, S., Alexandre, C., Calleja, M. and Vincent, J. P. (2000). The progeny of wingless-expressing cells deliver the signal at a distance in Drosophila embryos. Curr. Biol. 10, 321-324.[CrossRef][Medline]
Piddini, E., Marshall, F., Dubois, L., Hirst, E. and Vincent, J. P. (2005). Arrow (LRP6) and Frizzled2 cooperate to degrade Wingless in Drosophila imaginal discs. Development 132, 5479-5489.
Slot, J. W., Geuze, H. J., Gigengack, S., Lienhard, G. E. and James, D. E. (1991). Immuno-localization of the insulin regulatable glucose transporter in brown adipose tissue of the rat. J. Cell Biol. 113, 123-135.
Strigini, M. and Cohen, S. M. (2000). Wingless gradient formation in the Drosophila wing. Curr. Biol. 10, 293-300.[CrossRef][Medline]
Struhl, G. and Basler, K. (1993). Organizing activity of wingless protein in Drosophila. Cell 72, 527-540.[CrossRef][Medline]
Takada, R., Satomi, Y., Kurata, T., Ueno, N., Norioka, S., Kondoh, H., Takao, T. and Takada, S. (2006). Monounsaturated fatty acid modification of Wnt protein: its role in Wnt secretion. Dev. Cell 11, 791-801.[CrossRef][Medline]
Tanaka, K., Kitagawa, Y. and Kadowaki, T. (2002). Drosophila segment polarity gene product porcupine stimulates the posttranslational N-glycosylation of wingless in the endoplasmic reticulum. J. Biol. Chem. 277, 12816-12823.
Willert, K., Brown, J. D., Danenberg, E., Duncan, A. W., Weissman, I. L., Reya, T., Yates, J. R., 3rd and Nusse, R. (2003). Wnt proteins are lipid-modified and can act as stem cell growth factors. Nature 423, 448-452.[CrossRef][Medline]
Zecca, M., Basler, K. and Struhl, G. (1996). Direct and long-range action of a wingless morphogen gradient. Cell 87, 833-844.[CrossRef][Medline]
![]()
CiteULike
Complore
Connotea
Del.icio.us
Digg
Reddit
Technorati
Twitter What's this?
Related articles in JCS:
This article has been cited by other articles:
![]() |
F. Hamaratoglu, K. Basler, and M. Affolter Confronting Morphogen Gradients: How Important Are They for Growth? Sci. Signal., October 27, 2009; 2(94): pe67 - pe67. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
Y. Zhang, D. Chen, and Z. Wang Analyses of mental dysfunction-related ACSl4 in Drosophila reveal its requirement for Dpp/BMP production and visual wiring in the brain Hum. Mol. Genet., October 15, 2009; 18(20): 3894 - 3905. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
L. A. Baena-Lopez, X. Franch-Marro, and J.-P. Vincent Wingless Promotes Proliferative Growth in a Gradient-Independent Manner Sci. Signal., October 6, 2009; 2(91): ra60 - ra60. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
K. M. Cadigan and M. Peifer Wnt Signaling from Development to Disease: Insights from Model Systems Cold Spring Harb Perspect Biol, August 1, 2009; 1(2): a002881 - a002881. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
In vivo role of lipid adducts on Wingless Development, June 1, 2008; 135(11): e1 - e1. [Full Text] |
||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||