Upregulation of the SERCA-type Ca2+ pump activity in response to endoplasmic reticulum stress in PC12 cells

Ca2+-ATPases of endoplasmic reticulum (SERCAs) are responsible for maintenance of the micro- to millimolar Ca2+ ion concentrations within the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) of eukaryotic cells. This intralumenal Ca2+ storage is important for the generation of Ca2+ signals as well as for the correct folding and posttranslational processing of proteins entering ER after synthesis. ER perturbations such as depletion of Ca2+ or abolishing the oxidative potential, inhibition of glycosylation, or block of secretory pathway, activate the Unfolded Protein Response, consisting of an upregulation of a number of ER-resident chaperones/stress proteins in an effort to boost the impaired folding capacity.

We show here that in PC12 cells, depletion of ER Ca2+ by EGTA, as well as inhibition of disulphide bridge formation within the ER by dithiotreitol or inhibition of N-glycosylation by tunicamycin, led to a 2- to 3-fold increase of the SERCA-mediated 45Ca2+ transport to microsomes isolated from cells exposed to these stress agents. The time course of this response corresponded to that for transcriptional upregulation of ER stress proteins, as well as to the increase in the SERCA2b mRNA, as we recently observed in an independent study.

These findings provide the first functional evidence for the increase of SERCA pumping capacity in cells subjected to the ER stress. Since at least three different and unrelated mechanisms of eliciting the ER stress response were found to cause this functional upregulation of Ca2+ transport into the ER, these results support the existence of a coupling between the induction of the UPR pathway in general, and the regulation of expression of at least one of the SERCA pump isoforms.