Paxillin regulates androgen receptor expression associated with granulosa cell focal adhesions

Paxillin is a ubiquitously expressed adaptor protein integral to focal adhesions, cell motility, and apoptosis. Paxillin has also recently been implicated as a mediator of nongenomic androgen receptor (AR) signaling in prostate cancer and other cells. We sought to investigate the relationship between paxillin and AR in granulosa cells (GCs), where androgen actions, apoptosis, and focal adhesions are of known importance, but where the role of paxillin is understudied. We recently showed that paxillin knockout in mouse GCs increases fertility in older mice. Here, we demonstrate that paxillin knockdown in human granulosa-derived KGN cells, as well as knockout in mouse primary GCs, results in reduced AR protein but not reduced mRNA expression. Further, we find that both AR protein and mRNA half-lives are reduced by approximately one-third in the absence of paxillin, but that cells adapt to chronic loss of paxillin by upregulating AR gene expression. Using co-immunofluorescence and proximity ligation assays, we show that paxillin and AR co-localize at the plasma membrane in GCs in a focal adhesion kinase-dependent way, and that disruption of focal adhesions leads to reduced AR protein level. Our findings suggest that paxillin recruits AR to the GC membrane, where it may be sequestered from proteasomal degradation and poised for nongenomic signaling, as reported in other tissues. To investigate the physiological significance of this in disorders of androgen excess, we tested the effect of GC-specific paxillin knockout in a mouse model of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) induced by chronic postnatal dihydrotestosterone (DHT) exposure. While none of the control mice had estrous cycles, 33% of paxillin knockout mice were cycling, indicating that paxillin deletion may offer partial protection from the negative effects of androgen excess by reducing AR expression. Paxillin-knockout GCs from mice with DHT-induced PCOS also produced more estradiol than GCs from littermate controls. Thus, paxillin may be a novel target in the management of androgen-related disorders in women, such as PCOS.