A novel, rapid, and highly sensitive mass assay for phosphatidylinositol 3,4,5-trisphosphate (PtdIns(3,4,5)P3) and its application to measure insulin-stimulated PtdIns(3,4,5)P3 production in rat skeletal muscle in vivo.

The pivotal role of phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI 3-kinase) in signal transduction has been well established in recent years. Receptor-regulated forms of PI 3-kinase are thought to phosphorylate phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate (PtdIns(4,5)P2) at the 3-position of the inositol ring to give the putative lipid second messenger, phosphatidylinositol 3,4,5-trisphosphate (PtdIns(3,4, 5)P3). Cellular levels of PtdIns(3,4,5)P3 are currently measured by time-consuming procedures involving radiolabeling with high levels of 32PO4, extraction, and multiple chromatography steps. To avoid these lengthy and hazardous procedures, many laboratories prefer to assay PI 3-kinase activity in cell extracts and/or appropriate immunoprecipitates. Such approaches are not readily applied to measurements of PtdIns(3,4,5)P3 in extracts of animal tissues. Moreover, they can be misleading since the association of PI 3-kinases in molecular complexes is not necessarily correlated with the enzyme's activity state. Direct measurements of PtdIns(3,4,5)P3 would also be desirable since its concentration may be subject to additional control mechanisms such as activation or inhibition of the phosphatases responsible for PtdIns(3,4,5)P3 metabolism. We now report a simple, reproducible isotope dilution assay which detects PtdIns(3,4,5)P3 at subpicomole sensitivity, suitable for measurements of both basal and stimulated levels of PtdIns(3,4,5)P3 obtained from samples containing approximately 1 mg of cellular protein. Total lipid extracts, containing PtdIns(3,4,5)P3, are first subjected to alkaline hydrolysis which results in the release of the polar head group Ins(1,3,4,5)P4. The latter is measured by its ability to displace [32P]Ins(1,3,4,5)P4 from a highly specific binding protein present in cerebellar membrane preparations. We show that this assay solely detects PtdIns(3,4,5)P3 and does not suffer from interference by other compounds generated after alkaline hydrolysis of total cellular lipids. Measurements on a wide range of cells, including rat-1 fibroblasts, 1321N1 astrocytoma cells, HEK 293 cells, and rat adipocytes, show wortmannin-sensitive increased levels of PtdIns(3,4,5)P3 upon stimulation with appropriate agonists. The enhanced utility of this procedure is further demonstrated by measurements of PtdIns(3,4,5)P3 levels in tissue derived from whole animals. Specifically, we show that stimulation with insulin increases PtdIns(3,4,5)P3 levels in rat skeletal muscle in vivo with a time course which parallels the activation of protein kinase B in the same samples.