Nerve growth factor-induced changes in neural cell adhesion molecule (N-CAM) in PC12 cells

The effects of nerve growth factor (NGF) on the expression of neural cell adhesion molecule (N-CAM) in PC12 cells were determined. A quantitative immunoassay was used to show that NGF induces a 4- to 5-fold increase in relative N-CAM levels over a 3-day period. This increase could not be mimicked by cholera toxin suggesting that it is not a simple consequence of morphological differentiation. The changes in N-CAM levels induced by NGF were accompanied by changes in N-CAM molecular forms. The 140-kd N-CAM species is the major N-CAM expressed by naive PC12 cells, while NGF-treated cultures express N-CAM species of 180 kd and 140 kd. Northern analysis showed that naive cells express a 6.7-kd N-CAM mRNA species only, while NGF-treated cultures express both a 6.7-kb and a 7.2-kb transcript. As the 6.7-kb and 7.2-kb mRNAs are alternative spliced transcripts of a single gene, this result shows that NGF can activate a neuron-specific splicing mechanism. This is the first description of control of N-CAM expression by a growth factor.