Reassessment of fluid-phase endocytosis and diacytosis in monolayer cultures of human fibroblasts.

We have investigated the kinetics of fluid-phase endocytosis and diacytosis in confluent monolayers of human fibroblasts by comparing the behavior of three markers that have been previously used to study this process: [14C]sucrose, 125I-labeled polyvinylpyrrolidone ([125I]PVP), and Lucifer Yellow. Three distinct kinetic compartments were observed with all markers. The first was relatively large (10-60 fl/cell), reached steady state within 15 min at 37 degrees C, and was rapidly lost from monolayers after removing the markers at 37 degrees C but not at 0 degree C. These properties indicate that this compartment is the same as that previously proposed to be the major intracellular compartment involved in diacytosis. However, this compartment is probably extracellular fluid trapped between cells since it is rapidly lost into the medium when the cells are either scraped or enzymatically removed from the culture dishes at 0 degree C. In addition, it very slowly undergoes both filling and emptying at 0 degree C. However, we did observe a second, much smaller, kinetic compartment (approximately 2 fl/cell) undergoing rapid diacytosis that does seem to be intracellular. A third compartment that we observed accumulates markers at a linear rate (10-20 fl cell-1 hr-1) and is not lost from cells even after incubation periods greater than 6 hr. The markers [14C]sucrose and [125I]PVP displayed very similar behavior with respect to all three compartments and yielded nearly linear long-term uptake rates, thus indicating that there is little if any absorbed component in their uptake. However, Lucifer Yellow displayed significantly higher incorporation rates and its uptake rate was strongly nonlinear, indicating its uptake in fibroblasts is predominantly adsorptive. Our observations indicate that the rate of fluid-phase endocytosis in fibroblasts is significantly less than previously reported and that any compartment involved in diacytosis is very small and turns over very rapidly. Significantly, we estimate that the constitutive internalization of clathrin-coated pits is sufficient to account for the majority of fluid-phase endocytosis and thus represents a major mechanism of membrane retrieval in these cells.