Identification of endothelin receptor subtypes in rat kidney cortex using subtype-selective ligands.

125I-Endothelin (ET)-1 and 125I-ET-3 displayed specific, saturable, and high affinity binding to membranes prepared from rat kidney cortex. Saturation binding experiments using 125I-ET-1 and 125I-ET-3 revealed that 125I-ET-3 binding sites were 40-50% less abundant than 125I-ET-1 binding sites. The dissociation constants (Kd) and maximum binding (Bmax) for 125I-ET-1 and 125I-ET-3 with these membranes were 218 +/- 23 pM and 275 +/- 20 fmol/mg of protein and 207 +/- 19 pM and 113 +/- 17 fmol/mg of protein, respectively. In the presence of 10 nM sarafotoxin 6c, a selective agonist for ETb receptors, 125I-ET-1 binding was decreased by 45-50% and 125I-ET-3 binding was totally abolished, suggesting that approximately 40-50% of kidney cortex ET receptors are of the ETB subtype and that 125I-ET-1 binds to both ETA and ETB receptors with the same high affinity, whereas 125I-ET-3 binds to only ETB receptors with high affinity. In addition, in the presence of BQ123 [cyclo(D-Trp,D-Asp,L-Pro,D-Val,L-Leu)], a selective antagonist for ETA receptors, 125I-ET-1 binding was decreased by 50%, whereas 125I-ET-3 binding was unaffected. Our results strongly suggest that rat kidney cortex contains ETA and ETB receptors in a 50:50 ratio and that sarafotoxin 6c and BQ123 are valuable tools in identifying the subtypes of ET receptors in various tissues.