Suppression of syntheses of high molecular weight nonmuscle tropomyosins in macrophages.

In mouse fibroblasts, at least five TM isoforms are identified and they can be grouped into the high (TM1, TM2, and TM3) and low molecular weight TM isoforms (TM4 and TM5). Suppression of one of the high molecular weight tropomyosin (TM) isoforms in nonmuscle cells is implicated to be one of the causes for disorganization of actin microfilament bundles and subsequent changes in cell motility and cell shape. In this study, we studied the expression of tropomyosin isoforms in macrophages that exhibit high motility and ability to change cell shape. Two-dimensional gel electrophoresis followed by Western blot analysis using polyclonal anti-TM antiserum revealed that the high molecular weight TM isoforms were lacking in both resident and activated mouse peritoneal macrophages. Analyses of newly synthesized TM isoforms, Northern blot analyses using isoform-specific cDNA probes, and immunostaining with monoclonal anti-TM antibody that recognizes only the high molecular weight TM isoforms also demonstrated that the syntheses of the high molecular weight TM isoforms (TM1, TM2, and TM3) were completely suppressed, whereas the low molecular weight TM isoforms (TM4 and TM5) were expressed in macrophages. These results indicate that macrophages intrinsically lack the high molecular weight TM isoforms. In order to obtain information about cellular localization of the low molecular weight TM isoforms in macrophages, they were immunostained with polyclonal anti-TM antiserum that recognizes both the high and low molecular weight TM isoforms. The results showed that the low molecular weight TM isoforms were co-localized with F-actin in punctate and short fibrous structures. In addition, we performed in situ hybridization analysis to examine localizations of the TM mRNAs in fibroblasts and macrophages. The results showed that TM mRNAs were localized throughout the cytoplasm.