Oral fibroblast expression of wound-inducible transcript 3.0 (wit3.0) accelerates the collagen gel contraction in vitro.

Wounds of the oral mucosa show faster closure with less scar formation than skin wounds in other areas. A differentially expressed cDNA, wound-inducible transcript 3.0 (wit3.0), was isolated from oral mucosal wound in rats (Sukotjo, C., Abanmy, A. A., Ogawa, T., and Nishimura, I. (2002) J. Dent. Res. 81, 229-235). The purpose of this study was to characterize the wit3.0 gene structure and the function of its deduced peptide. Human and rat genome databases revealed that the gene for wit3.0 was located in human chromosome 12p11.23 and rat chromosome 4q44. Its human and rat gene structures were well conserved, composed of 7 exons spread over 20 kb. Exon 5 was alternatively spliced generating two transcripts encoding deduced peptides of 215 and 253 amino acids (wit3.0 alpha and wit3.0 beta, respectively). The protein families data base of alignments (Pfam) analysis suggested the wit3.0 peptide sequence shared similarity with a portion of the myosin II coiled-coil domain consensus sequence. Fibroblasts isolated from the rat oral wound up-regulated wit3.0 expression and exhibited greater ability to contract collagen gel in vitro than fibroblasts isolated from untreated oral mucosa/gingiva. NIH3T3 and rat oral fibroblasts transfected with expression vector containing the coding sequences of wit3.0 alpha or wit3.0 beta increased in vitro collagen gel contraction. When treated with TGF beta-1, NIH3T3 fibroblast expression of wit3.0 showed no significant change, whereas alpha smooth muscle actin was increased in a dose-dependent manner. These data suggest that there may be a novel wound healing pathway involving wit3.0 underlying the favorable early wound closure characteristics of oral mucosa.