Differential susceptibility of morphologically TPA-resistant and -sensitive Balb/c 3T3 variants to TPA-induced cell transformation: relationship to induction of membrane ruffling.

To investigate the responsiveness to phorbol ester-mediated malignant cell transformation of Balb/c 3T3 variant clones that were morphologically phorbol ester-sensitive and -resistant, we used an in vitro two-stage transformation assay in which cells were treated with 0.1 microgram/ml of MCA as an initiator and subsequently with 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate (TPA) as a promoter. The morphologically TPA-sensitive variant, TR5, and the parent cells showed a relatively low sensitivity to TPA-induced cell transformation, whereas the morphologically TPA-resistant variant, TR4 cells, exhibited 50- to 100-fold higher sensitivity to phorbol ester-induced cell transformation than the parent or the TR5 cells. We investigated the effects of TPA on protein kinase C activity, 80 kDa PKC substrate phosphorylation, the organization of actin stress fibers, DNA synthesis, and anchorage-independent growth in the three cell clones. They showed similar responses to these biological and biochemical events, indicating that these PKC-mediated events may not be the causes of the differential responsiveness of the variant cells to TPA-induced cell transformation. We further examined their responsiveness to growth factor-mediated and spontaneous induction of membrane ruffling. When these cells were stimulated by PDGF in their growing phase, membrane ruffling was rapidly induced in the three cells. However, the PDGF-mediated membrane ruffling was completely suppressed in parent and TR5 but not TR4 cells in the confluent, contact-inhibited (steady-state) growth phase. Similar responses were observed by other growth factors such as insulin, IGF-I, acidic or basic FGF. In addition, when the cells were cultured beyond confluence in the presence of TPA, spontaneous membrane ruffling was induced continuously up to termination of culture in TR4 but not in parent and TR5 cells. These results suggest that the deficiency in cell contact-mediated inhibition of membrane ruffling may be responsible for hypersensitivity of TR4 cells to TPA-induced cell transformation.