Pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating polypeptide stimulates prolactin gene expression in a rat pituitary cell line

Pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating polypeptide (PACAP) has been shown to activate adenylate cyclase and stimulate PRL secretion in dispersed pituitary cells. We have employed the GH3 rat pituitary cell line to investigate whether PACAP can regulate expression of the PRL gene. PACAP increased cellular levels of cAMP in a concentration-dependent fashion (EC50, approximately 6 x 10(-9) M). PACAP also increased PRL mRNA levels in GH3 cells, implying that this peptide stimulates a step in expression of the PRL gene. In addition, PACAP strongly stimulated chloramphenicol acetyltransferase (CAT) activity in GH3 cells transiently transfected with a plasmid containing the first 187 basepairs of the rat PRL promoter cloned up-stream of the CAT gene, implying that PACAP stimulates transcription directed by the PRL promoter. The PACAP stimulation of CAT activity was observed at concentrations as low as 10(-11) M. We examined the action of PACAP on expression of a 5'-deletion series of PRL-CAT constructs. The PACAP response is completely lost when PRL promoter sequences between positions -187 and -113 are removed, implying that neither a previously described sequence resembling a cAMP response element nor the most proximal pit-1-binding site 1P plays a major role in the actions of PACAP on PRL gene transcription. This observation together with the ability of low concentrations of PACAP to stimulate PRL promoter activity without detectably increasing cellular cAMP levels suggest that the action of PACAP on PRL gene transcription might involve a cAMP-independent pathway.