Functional involvement of mSos in interleukin-3 and thrombin stimulation of the Ras, mitogen-activated protein kinase pathway in BaF3 murine hematopoietic cells.

Stimulation of the interleukin (IL)-3 receptor provokes rapid activation of the Ras pathway in various hematopoietic cell lines. Also, a wide range of G-protein-coupled receptors induce Ras activation following ligand stimulation. In this report, we investigate the mechanism underlying Ras activation upon stimulation of these two types of receptors in hematopoietic cells. Thrombin, a G-protein-coupled receptor ligand, was found to stimulate extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK)/mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) in IL-3-dependent BaF3 cells, suggesting a significant function of thrombin receptor-mediated signaling. We show that the Ras-guanine nucleotide exchange factor mSos is indispensable for activation of the Ras pathway in IL-3- or thrombin-stimulated BaF3 cells. The activation of Ras in response to IL-3 as defined by accumulation of the GTP-bound form was impaired by conditional overexpression of a dominant-negative mutant of mSos (DeltamSos1). Furthermore, following induction of DeltamSos1, IL-3 enhancement of the kinase activities of c-Raf-1, ERK2, and JNK1 downstream of Ras was almost completely blocked. Similarly, thrombin-induced Ras-dependent ERK2 activation was diminished by DeltamSos1. However, the tyrosine phosphorylation pattern of cellular substrates upon thrombin stimulation was entirely different from the pattern of IL-3-induced tyrosine phosphorylation. Collectively, these results provide evidence that mSos plays a crucial role in both IL-3 and thrombin activation of the Ras pathway in hematopoietic cells, although molecules (including tyrosine kinases) mediating the signal to mSos are likely to be different between the two types of receptors.