Measurement of secretory vesicle pH reveals intravesicular alkalinization by vesicular monoamine transporter type 2 resulting in inhibition of prohormone cleavage.

1. The acidic interior of neuroendocrine secretory vesicles provides both an energy gradient for amine-proton exchangers (VMATs) to concentrate small transmitter molecules, for example catecholamines, and an optimal pH for the prohormone convertases which cleave hormone precursors. There is evidence that VMAT activity modulates prohormone cleavage, but in the absence of measurements of pH in secretory vesicles in intact cells, it has not been possible to establish whether these effects are attributable to raised intravesicular pH due to proton transport through VMATs. 2. Clones were generated of the hamster insulinoma cell line HIT-T15 expressing a pH-sensitive form of green fluorescent protein (GFP-F64L/S65T) targeted to secretory vesicles, with and without co-expression of VMAT2. In order to study prohormone cleavage, further clones were generated that expressed preprogastrin with and without co-expression of VMAT2. 3. Confocal microscopy of GFP fluorescence indicated that the pH in the secretory vesicles was 5.6 in control cells, compared with 6.6 in cells expressing VMAT2; the latter was reduced to 5.8 by the VMAT inhibitor reserpine. 4. Using a pulse-chase labelling protocol, cleavage of 34-residue gastrin (G34) was found to be inhibited by co-expression with VMAT2, and this was reversed by reserpine. Similar effects on vesicle pH and G34 cleavage were produced by ammonium chloride. 5. We conclude that VMAT expression confers the linked abilities to store biogenic amines and modulate secretory vesicle pH over a range influencing prohormone cleavage and therefore determining the identity of regulatory peptide secretory products.