Initiation and maintenance of NGF-stimulated neurite outgrowth requires activation of a phosphoinositide 3-kinase.

Application of nerve growth factor (NGF) to PC12 cells stimulates a programme of physiological changes leading to the development of a sympathetic neuron like phenotype, one aspect of which is the development of a neuronal morphology characterised by the outgrowth of neuritic processes. We have investigated the role of phosphoinositide 3-kinase in NGF-stimulated morphological differentiation through two approaches: firstly, preincubation with wortmannin, a reputedly specific inhibitor of phosphoinositide kinases, completely inhibited initial morphological responses to NGF, the formation of actin filament rich microspikes and subsequent neurite outgrowth. This correlated with wortmannin inhibition of NGF-stimulated phosphatidylinositol(3,4,5)trisphosphate (PtdInsP3) and phosphatidylinositol(3,4)bisphosphate (PtdIns(3,4)P2) production and with inhibition of NGF-stimulated phosphoinositide 3-kinase activity in anti-phosphotyrosine immunoprecipitates. Secondly, the overexpression of a mutant p85 regulatory subunit of the phosphoinositide 3-kinase, which cannot interact with the catalytic p110 subunit, also substantially inhibited the initiation of NGF-stimulated neurite outgrowth. In addition, we found that wortmannin caused a rapid collapse of more mature neurites formed following several days exposure of PC12 cells to NGF. These results indicate that NGF-stimulated neurite outgrowth requires the activity of a tyrosine kinase regulated PI3-kinase and suggest that the primary product of this enzyme, PtdInsP3, is a necessary second messenger for the cytoskeletal and membrane reorganization events which occur during neuronal differentiation.

Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 can use different tRNAs as primers for reverse transcription but selectively maintains a primer binding site complementary to tRNA(3Lys).

The initiation of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) reverse transcription occurs at a site in the viral RNA genome which is designated the primer-binding site (PBS). The HIV-1 PBS is an 18-nucleotide sequence that is complementary to the 3'-terminal 18 nucleotides of tRNA(3Lys), which is used as the primer for reverse transcription. All HIV-1 isolates sequenced to date contain a PBS complementary to tRNA(3Lys), suggesting that other cellular tRNAs might not function as primers for reverse transcription. To investigate this possibility, we have substituted the HIV-1 PBS with sequences predicted to be complementary to the 3'-terminal nucleotides of tRNA(1,2Lys), tRNA(Ile), and tRNA(His), which previous studies have identified to be packaged into HIV-1 virions along with tRNA(3Lys). We demonstrate that infectious viruses which utilized tRNA(1,2Lys), tRNA(Ile), and tRNA(His) in reverse transcription can be recovered. However, the appearances of viruses with PBSs complementary to these alternate tRNAs were delayed compared with the wild type. After extended in vitro culture, viruses containing the PBSs complementary to these different tRNAs reverted back to the wild-type PBS complementary to tRNA3(Lys). Furthermore, only the first 9 nucleotides of the 18 nucleotide PBSs were sufficient for HIV-1 to utilize the alternate tRNA primers in reverse transcription, demonstrating that HIV-1 does not require the complete 18-nucleotide PBS to utilize these tRNA primers for reverse transcription. These results suggest that factors other than complementarity between the PBS and the primer tRNA contribute to the selectivity of tRNA3(Lys) to initiate HIV-1 reverse transcription.