Proteome profile changes that are differentially regulated by lipid and protein phosphatase activities of tumor suppressor PTEN in PTEN-expressing U-87 MG human glioblastoma cells.

The phosphatase and tensin homolog tumor suppressor (PTEN) belongs to a class of "gatekeeper" tumor suppressors together with p53, retinoblastoma and adenomatous polyposis. It is considered one of the most important tumor suppressors in the post p53 era. Previously to identify the molecules involved in the signaling network regulated by PTEN using proteomic tools, we reported global proteome profiles at different time points using the PTEN inducible NIH3T3 cells (Kim, S.-y., Kim, Y. S., Bahk, Y. Y., Mol. Cells 2003, 15, 396-405). However, the system had a critical limitation that NIH3T3 cell has endogenous wild-type PTEN and, thus to be exact, the induced PTEN could not give the answer about the real physiological roles of this tumor suppressor. Here, to find out PTEN-related protein network we have established various PTEN (wild-type, an activity inert C124G, and a lipid phosphatase deficient G129E)-expressing cell clones in U-87 MG human glioblastoma cells lacking detectable PTEN as a result of genetic lesions. In this biological context, we compared their morphological and expression patterns, and proteome images of each PTEN-expressing cell clone by 2-DE followed by identification with MALDI-TOF MS. We obtained some pieces of evidence that morphological change by PTEN expression is mediated by its protein phosphatase activity and their growth rate by the lipid phosphatase activity. The proteomic approaches showed that 30 proteins possibly correlated with PTEN's protein phosphatase activity (13 down-regulated and 17 up-regulated) and 20 with the lipid phosphatase activity (14 down-regulated and 6 up-regulated) were identified. Taken together, we conclude that the comparative analysis of proteome from various PTEN-expressing cells has yielded interpretable data to elucidate the protein network directly and/or indirectly caused by individual phosphatase activities of PTEN in vivo.