Inhibitory pathway of cardiac PKA-dependent Cl- conductance via pertussis toxin-sensitive G proteins.

The inhibitory pathway of cardiac cAMP-dependent protein kinase regulated Cl- conductance was investigated using the whole-cell configuration of patch-clamp techniques in single guinea pig ventricular myocytes. Pertussis toxin-sensitive G proteins (Gi), mediating the signal transductions between muscarinic receptors and adenylate cyclase, have a substantial tonic activity even in the absence of muscarinic receptor modulators. Muscarinic agonists or antagonists (like atropine) either increase or decrease this basal activity of Gi by altering the proportion of active and inactive forms of the receptors. Similar to L-type Ca-channel currents, the Cl- conductance showed a transient over-recovery upon cessation of brief muscarinic receptor stimulation by carbachol (CCh) (rebound). Atropine alone enhanced the Cl- conductance elicited by low concentrations of Iso (reverse agonist). After washout of atropine, the over-suppression of the conductance was observed as a mirror image of CCh-induced rebound (reverse rebound). Both types of rebound became prominent when cell dialysis with pipette solutions containing 100 microM GTP was minimized with high-resistance pipettes. Endogenous GTP is therefore an intracellular modulator, and not simply a mediator, of Gi-dependent signal transduction.