Restoration of glucagon responsiveness in spontaneously transformed rat hepatocytes (RL-PR-C) by fusion with normal progenitor cells and rat liver plasma membranes.

Spontaneously transformed RL-PR-C rat hepatocytes, unlike their normal differentiated progenitor cells, are insensitive to glucagon, although seemingly possessing large numbers of glucagon receptors and although retaining guanyl nucleotide regulatory protein-adenylate cyclase [ATP pyrophosphate-lyase (cyclizing), EC 4.6.1.1] system that responds to catecholamines, cholera toxin, and fluoride ions. Biochemical fusions between normal RL-PR-C hepatocytes or purified rat liver plasma membranes (whose adenylate cyclases were previously irreversibly inactivated with N-ethylmaleimide) with spontaneously transformed hepatocytes produced hybrids whose basal and fluoride-stimulated adenylate cyclase activities reflected those of the parental transformed cells but that now responded to glucagon. Using cholera toxin-catalyzed ADP-riboxylation of transformed hepatocytes to mark their guanyl nucleotide regulatory protein, fusiong such cells with N-ethylmaleimide-treated normal hepatocytes, and examining glucagon stimulation of adenylate cyclase activity in fusion hybrids produced results suggesting that the regulatory protein of the transformed cells is functionally normal. In fusion experiments between N-ethylmaleimide-treated hepatocytes and igeon erythrocytes, we found that normal, but not transformed, hepatocytes were effective in conferring glucagon sensitivity upon erythrocytes. Glucagon binding data revealed that, whereas normal RL-PR-C hepatocytes have two independent classes of binding sites, one of higher and the other of lower affinity, transformed cells possess only the low-affinity receptors. From these and previous observations, it is possible to conclude that the insensitivity of spontaneously transformed RL-PR-C hepatocytes to glucagon is due to the loss, during the transformation process, of the high-affinity glucagon receptor.