Novel mechanism of intracellular calcium release in pituitary cells

In sea urchin eggs an enzymatic metabolite of beta-NAD+, called cyclic ADP-ribose (cADPR), is as potent and powerful a releaser of sequestered intracellular Ca2+ as is inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate (IP3). The enzyme that synthesizes cADPR is present in several vertebrate animal tissues, but the Ca(2+)-releasing activity of cADPR has not been described in mammalian cells. We report here that incubation of beta-NAD+ with cell-free extracts of several rat tissues (including pituitary gland) generates a product which releases intracellular Ca2+ stores in permeabilized rat pituitary GH4C1 cells. This product has the biological characteristics of cADPR (it acts after depletion of the IP3 stores and after blockade of the IP3 receptor by heparin). The response is mimicked, in a concentration-dependent manner, by authentic cADPR and is desensitized by prior incubation with cADPR. We conclude that cADPR is not only synthesized by certain mammalian cells but also acts in such cells to release compartmentalized intracellular Ca2+ by a mechanism that differs from that used by IP3. Therefore, cADPR may serve, in addition to IP3, as a second messenger for intracellular Ca2+ mobilization in mammalian cells.