Two polysialic acid synthases, mouse ST8Sia II and IV, synthesize different degrees of polysialic acids on different substrate glycoproteins in mouse neuroblastoma Neuro2a cells.

We previously cloned cDNAs encoding two different polysialic acid (PSA) synthases, ST8Sia II and IV, from mouse, and showed that both mouse ST8Sia II and IV can synthesize PSA on the neural cell adhesion molecule (NCAM) as well as other glycoproteins such as fetuin, at least in vitro (Kojima, N., Tachida, Y., Yoshida, Y., and Tsuji, S. (1996) J. Biol. Chem. 271, 19457-19463]. In the present study, to clarify how the two PSA synthases act differently in vivo, we first cloned PSA-expressing cell lines (N2a-II and N2a-IV) by stable transfection of the cDNA encoding either mST8Sia II or IV into mouse neuroblastoma Neuro2a cells, which do not express PSA but express NCAM, then compared the expression of the PSA and NCAM isoforms and de novo synthesis of PSA between N2a-II and N2a-IV. Western blotting with an anti-NCAM polyclonal antibody showed that NCAM was expressed as the polysialylated form in both ST8Sia II cDNA-transfected and ST8Sia IV cDNA-transfected Neuro2a cells, but that the polysialylated NCAMs expressed in ST8Sia IV cDNA-transfected clones migrated much slower on SDS-PAGE than those expressed in ST8Sia II cDNA-transfected clones. The slower migration of polysialylated NCAM of the ST8Sia IV cDNA-transfected clone (N2a-IV) than that of the ST8Sia II cDNA-transfected clone (N2a-II) was also observed when cells were metabolically labeled with [3H]glucosamine or pulse-chase labeled with [35S] methionine followed by immunoprecipitation with anti-PSA antibody or anti-NCAM monoclonal antibody. In addition, polysialylated N-glycans of PSA-carrying glycoproteins prepared from [3H] glucosamine-labeled N2a-IV by immunoprecipitation with anti-PSA monoclonal antibody were eluted at a much higher salt concentration than those from [3H] glucosamine-labeled N2a-II on an anion-exchange column. These results indicated that the degree of de novo polysialylation of NCAM by mST8Sia IV was much higher than that by mST8Sia II. In N2a-IV, NCAM-120, -140, and -180 were expressed as polysialylated forms, while polysialylation was restricted to NCAM-140 and -180, i.e., not NCAM-120, in N2a-ST8Sia II. Metabolic labeling of the cells with [3H] glucosamine, pulse-chase labeling with [35S] methionine followed by immunoprecipitation with anti-PSA antibody, and subsequent sialidase treatment revealed that NCAM-140 and -180 were specifically polysialylated in N2a-II, whereas not only NCAM but also other glycoproteins were de novo polysialylated in N2a-IV. The above results demonstrated that the two different PSA synthases, mST8Sia II and IV, synthesize PSA of different lengths on different substrate glycoproteins in vivo when the enzymes are expressed in neuroblastoma Neuro2a cells. These differences suggest that mST8Sia II and IV play different roles in the biosynthesis and expression of PSA.