Role of extracellular signaling on endothelial cell proliferation and protein N-glycosylation.

In vitro studies of angiogenic phenomenon have been limited due to nonavailability of a simple and biologically relevant model of the capillary wall. Recent development of a capillary endothelial cell line from the vascular bed of bovine adrenal medulla made us to study the effect of heparin, thrombin, thyroxine, glucagon, insulin, and phorbol myristate acetate (PMA) on the proliferative and metabolic activities such as glycosylation of asparagine-linked glycoproteins of these cells in culture. Out of six different agents studied here, only heparin, thrombin, and thyroxine reduced the doubling time of these cells by 24 hr with no observed morphological abnormality. Glucagon, showed marginal reduction in the cell doubling time. By contrast, insulin and PMA enhanced the doubling time. Insulin treatment though induced the S phase of cell cycle but it blocked the cells entry into the G2 + M phase. PMA arrested the cells in G0/G1 phase. The cellular response to protein N-glycosylation is increased in the presence of thyroxine, insulin, and thrombin and the effect is dose dependent. Further analysis on SDS-PAGE indicated that glycosylation of 80-120 kDa and 43 kDa glycoprotein species are enhanced when these cells are treated with insulin and thrombin. Glycopeptide generated from these glycoproteins suggested that they all carry "high mannose" and "complex" type oligosaccharide chains attached to their protein core.