Nature of the critical labile event that controls RB phosphorylation in the cyclic AMP-dependent cell cycle of thyrocytes in primary culture.

This study addresses the nature of the critical labile event that couples at restriction point mitogenic cascades with the autonomous part of the cell cycle. In primary cultures of dog thyroid epithelial cells, kinetic experiments indicate that a labile cAMP-dependent event positively controls a late G1 commitment to DNA replication and RB phosphorylation. As previously shown in this system, the cAMP-dependent mitogenic pathway differs from the most generally envisaged growth factor cascades as it stimulates the accumulation of p27(kip1) but not of cyclins D. Nevertheless, cyclin D3 and CDK4 activity are essential in the cAMP-dependent mitogenesis, and cAMP unmasks the DCS-22 epitope of cyclin D3 and induces the nuclear translocations and assembly of cyclin D3 and CDK4 in a complex that also contains p27(kip1). Unexpectedly, the washing out of forskolin rapidly arrested S phase entry and the accumulation of hyperphosphorylated RB, but did not reverse any of the above events associated with cyclin D3-CDK4 activation. This implies that even after induction of stable nuclear cyclin D3-CDK4 complexes, dog thyrocytes still depend on cAMP for RB phosphorylation and commitment to DNA synthesis, which suggests that a key labile event responsible for a last control of restriction point passage remains to be uncovered, in the cAMP-dependent cell cycle of dog thyrocytes and possibly other systems. Copyright 1999 Academic Press.