Gab2 is involved in differential phosphoinositide 3-kinase signaling by two splice forms of c-Kit.

The stem cell factor receptor/c-Kit plays an important physiological role in hematopoiesis, melanogenesis, and gametogenesis. It has also been implicated in numerous human malignancies. Signal transduction pathways shown to be of importance for c-Kit-mediated transformation include the phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K)/Akt pathway. We have previously shown that two alternative splice forms of c-Kit, denoted GNNK(-) and GNNK(+), mediate distinctively different signals. In this study, we found that in the hematopoietic cell line Ba/F3, GNNK(-) c-Kit mediates a substantially stronger activation of PI3K/Akt than GNNK(+) c-Kit. This difference in signaling was shown to be dependent on the association of the scaffolding protein Gab2 with c-Kit, and Src-mediated phosphorylation of Gab2 was shown to be to be independent of the direct association of PI3K with c-Kit. Furthermore, proliferation and survival of Ba/F3 cells expressing a mutant of c-Kit that fails to bind to PI3K directly were slightly decreased compared with wild-type c-Kit-expressing cells. Using small interfering RNA technology, we further verified a role of Gab2 in inducing activation of PI3K/Akt downstream of c-Kit. To summarize, we show that PI3K activation by c-Kit is both splice form-dependent and cell type-specific. Furthermore, activation of PI3K by c-Kit is dependent both on the direct PI3K-binding site in c-Kit and on the phosphorylation of Gab2. The fact that c-Kit has been found mutated in numerous human malignancies, including acute myeloid leukemia, and that Gab2 is often overexpressed in acute myeloid leukemia suggests a potential role of Gab2-mediated PI3K activation in transformation.