Differential protein synthesis by murine peritoneal macrophages elicited by various stimuli

Protein synthetic patterns of murine peritoneal macrophages were analyzed by two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (2D PAGE) of 35S methionine-labeled proteins. While the protein synthetic patterns exhibited by resident, inflammatory, and activated macrophages had numerous common features that distinguished them from the other normal non-macrophage cell types examined, unique proteins also characterized each macrophage population from the others. The accumulation by resident macrophages of proteins 23, 25, and 37 distinguished them from elicited cells, as did the former's more abundant synthesis of proteins 54 and 52. The protein synthetic patterns of inflammatory thioglycollate- and proteose peptone-elicited macrophages were strikingly similar, save for the former's greater levels of accumulation of proteins 14 and 28, and the latter's more pronounced expression of p23.5. Peritoneal macrophages elicited by treatment with heat-killed Propionibacterium acnes, the live, attenuated Mycobacterium bovis strain BCG, Listeria monocytogenes, and the protozoan flagellate Trypanosoma rhodesiense, all exhibited tumoricidal activity in 16-h or 72-h functional assays. They shared a common protein synthetic profile that differentiated them from the synthetic patterns characteristic of the non-tumoricidal resident and inflammatory macrophages. These tumoricidal macrophages were unique in synthesizing a protein(s) of approximate molecular weight 26,000 daltons. A time-course study employing P. acnes-activated peritoneal macrophages indicated that p26 accumulation decayed with tumoricidal capacity as a function of time in culture, although no direct correlation between lytic activity and p26 expression could be definitively established. Peritoneal macrophages elicited with proteose peptone were not directly tumoricidal but were rendered so upon in vitro treatment with nanogram amounts of bacterial lipopolysaccharide. The accumulation of low levels of p26 by the newly explanted proteose peptone-elicited macrophages suggests the possibility that this protein characterizes macrophage populations primed as well as triggered for tumoricidal activity.