Effects of varying extracellular amino acid profile on intracellular free amino acid concentrations and cell signaling in primary mammary epithelial cells.

Extracellular amino acid profiles affect intracellular AA concentrations and profile as well as signaling proteins that regulate protein translation rates. The objective of this study was to assess whether various extracellular AA profiles and varied ratios of Lys to Met would increase the phosphorylation of signaling proteins related to protein metabolism. Six AA profiles, reflecting Dulbecco's modified Eagle's medium (DMEM), blood meal (BM), corn gluten meal (CGM), casein (CAS), plasma of lactating cows (PLA), and a negative control (NEG) represented the first factor (F1), and the ratio of Lys to Met (unaltered or set to 3:1) was the second factor (F2). Treatments were arranged in a 6 × 2 factorial manner, resulting in 12 treatments that were replicated 4 times. The total AA masses for all treatments were set to 659 mg/L (63% of DMEM) except NEG (0 mg/L). Confluent mammary epithelial cells were exposed to treatment media for 80 min (SD = 7.4). Intracellular concentrations of 17 AA were changed according to F1. The Met and Leu percent of total intracellular AA mass, as an example, varied from 0.58 (PLA) to 6.94 (NEG, +F2) for Met and 0.05 (NEG, -F2) to 4.63 (CGM, +F2) for Leu. Overall, balancing for Lys and Met at a 3:1 ratio increased intracellular concentrations of Lys and Met by 54 and 71%, respectively. Within the mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway, phosphorylation of mTOR (Ser2448), ribosomal protein S6 (Ser235/236), and eukaryotic initiation factor 4E binding protein 1 (Thr37/46) (4EBP1) were increased by all 5 AA profiles compared with the NEG control. We found no differences in phosphorylation state among the 5 AA profiles, indicating lack of sensitivity to various AA profiles. This lack of sensitivity between AA profiles might also be due to assay imprecision or other experimental limitations. Only phosphorylation of 4EBP1 was increased for F2. Phosphorylation of eukaryotic initiation factor 2 α subunit (Ser51) was unaffected by either F1 or F2 factors. Regression analyses indicated that intracellular concentrations of Met, Thr, Ile, and Leu predicted phosphorylation of mTOR-related proteins with adequate precision and accuracy, suggesting that multiple EAA dictate regulation, regardless of AA ratios. Changes in extracellular AA profiles translated to modified intracellular AA profiles, and no single profile uniquely stimulated phosphorylation of the mTOR pathway-related proteins.