Studies on the intoxication pathway of tetanus toxin in the rat pheochromocytoma (PC12) cell line. Binding, internalization, and inhibition of acetylcholine release.

Tetanus toxin was found to be a potent inhibitor of neurosecretion in the rat pheochromocytoma cell line PC12, a system in which biochemical and functional studies could be performed in parallel. Incubation of the cells with 10 nM tetanus toxin (3 h) led to an inhibition of acetylcholine release by 75-80% when evoked by 200 microM veratridine, 1 mM carbachol, or 2 mM Ba2+. The main characteristics of the inhibition process are: 1) the toxin is very potent, with threshold doses of 10 pM; 2) the action of toxin is blocked at low temperature (0 degrees C) and by antitoxin; 3) the effects are dose- and time-dependent; 4) a concentration-dependent lag phase precedes the onset of the inhibitory effects. Thus the PC12 cultures are a valid system for studies on the underlying molecular process in tetanus action. This system was exploited by the use of long term incubation studies to examine the processes responsible for the lag phase. When cells were incubated with 0.1 nM 125I-tetanus toxin, cell-associated toxin reached a plateau of 16 fmol of toxin/mg of protein, yet the toxic effects did not appear until 12 h. Further, PC12 cells were found to rapidly internalize tetanus toxin, with a half-life of 1-2 min, once it was bound to the surface of the cells. Thus, the lag phase results from steps that occur in the intracellular compartment after internalization. An important discovery was that the differentiation state of the PC12 cells was a critical factor in determining sensitivity to tetanus toxin. Cells that were cultured with nerve growth factor for 8-12 days were very sensitive to toxin. In contrast, acetylcholine release from nondifferentiated, autodifferentiated, or dexamethasone-treated cultures was insensitive to tetanus toxin. Since differential expression of high affinity tetanus toxin receptors cannot explain these results, it is concluded that PC12 cells are capable of expressing different forms of excitation-secretion coupling mechanisms. Tetanus toxin should prove a valuable probe to further distinguish these processes.