Regulation of RNA degradation in cultured rat hepatocytes: effects of specific amino acids and insulin.

The regulation of RNA degradation by specific amino acids and insulin was investigated in cultured rat hepatocytes from fed rats previously injected in vivo with [6-(14)C]orotic acid. The effects of three groups of amino acids were compared to those of a complete amino acid mixture. The first one consisted of the eight amino acids (leucine, proline, glutamine, histidine, phenylalanine, tyrosine, methionine, tryptophan) previously found to be particularly effective in the control of proteolysis. The two other groups were defined from our study with single additions of amino acids, one consisting of proline, asparagine, glutamine, alanine, phenylalanine, and leucine and the other including the latter group with serine, histidine, and tyrosine. The results showed that these three groups were able to strongly inhibit deprivation-induced RNA breakdown at one and ten times normal plasma concentrations but to a lower extent than the complete amino acid mixture. Six amino acids (proline, asparagine, glutamine, alanine, phenylalanine, leucine) inhibited individually RNA degradation by more than 20%. However, the deletions of proline, asparagine, glutamine, or alanine from the group of these six amino acids were not followed by a loss of inhibitory effect. On the contrary, an important loss of inhibition was observed when leucine and phenylalanine were deleted. Furthermore, only these two amino acids exhibited an additive inhibitory effect. Thus leucine and phenylalanine could be considered as important inhibitors of RNA breakdown in cultured rat hepatocytes. Finally, insulin which had no significant effect on RNA degradation in the absence of amino acids, was able to potentiate the inhibitory effect of different amino acid groups.