GANP suppresses the arginine methyltransferase PRMT5 regulating IL-4-mediated STAT6-signaling to IgE production in B cells.

Antigen (Ag)-driven B cells undergo antibody (Ab) affinity maturation and class switching in germinal center (GC) B cells. GANP is one of the molecules required for Ab affinity maturation. We herein found an increase of IgE in B cell ganp-deficient mice and studied the signal transduction pathway regulated by GANP. GANP suppresses the STAT-mediated transcription activity in GC B cells with the regulation of arginine methyltransferase activity by the interaction with JAK-binding protein arginine methyltransferase (PRMT) 5 and JAK1/JAK3 that are responsible for STAT6 activation. The prmt5 mRNA was up-regulated in B cells after stimulation in vitro and in vivo in GC B cells. The loss of GANP caused up-regulation of phosphorylation and arginine dimethylation of STAT6 in B cells after stimulation with LPS and IL-4 in vitro. On the contrary, GANP over-expressed B cells in ganp gene-transgenic mice showed a low STAT6 phosphorylation after stimulation. The over-expression of PRMT5 caused the up-regulation of STAT6-mediated gene transcription, which was also suppressed by the co-transfection of GANP, in luciferase reporter assay. GANP down-regulates JAK1/JAK3 to STAT6-signaling with regulation of arginine methylation activity, which might be responsible for the B cell endogenous suppressive mechanism of hyper-IgE.