Effect of heat shock treatment on the production of variant testosterone-repressed prostate message-2 (TRPM-2) mRNA in culture cells.

The testosterone-repressive prostate message-2 (TRPM-2) variant mRNA lacking the exon 5 was induced in rat primary culture hepatocytes by heat shock treatment. A similar variant mRNA lacking exon 5 was also induced by heat shock treatment of the human culture cell line HepG2. On the other hand, in mouse cell line L929, heat shock treatment induced a variant TRPM-2 mRNA lacking only a small region located in exon 5. However, irrespective of the difference of mechanism of variant production, all the variant TRPM-2 mRNA species derived from each animal species encoded a putative protein constituted from the N-terminal one-third of TRPM-2 protein attached to a C-terminal TRPM-2 unrelated tail. In humans, the variant TRPM-2 species was not detected in normal tissues but was present in certain kinds of tumour cells. These results indicate that the splicing variants were induced as a direct result of heat shock treatment on cells per se and that the phenomenon of heat shock induction was observed in culture cells derived from different animal species.