Insulin resistance in skeletal muscle is among the primary contributors to the development of type 2 diabetes (T2D), a leading cause of heart disease, stroke, etc. Over 26 million U.S. adults have T2D. Molecular mechanisms for skeletal muscle insulin resistance remain elusive, limiting strategies to prevent/treat T2D. Phospholipase C, gamma 1 (PLCG1, aka PLC-γ1) serves as a signal transducer of tyrosine kinases and regulates various downstream signaling pathways in vitro. PLCG1 has been shown to interact with insulin receptor (IR) via its pleckstrin homology domain and plays a significant role in insulin-stimulated glucose uptake in adipocytes. Moreover, phosphorylation of tyrosine residue 771 (pTyr771) of PLCG1 has been shown to regulate PLCG1 activity. However, no prior publication shows that PLCG1 pTyr771 is linked with insulin resistance and T2D. Previously, we observed that insulin-stimulated PLCG1 pTyr771 is impaired in skeletal muscle from subjects with T2D compared to lean controls. In the present work, we mutated Tyr771 of PLCG1 to phenylalanine, and observed reduced insulin-stimulated AKT and AS160 phosphorylation in primary human skeletal muscle cells derived from an insulin sensitive participant. To identify the upstream regulator of PLCG1, we carried out in vitro kinase assay by incubating PLCG1 with insulin receptor. PLCG1 was expressed and purified from E. coli. The insulin receptor (active cytoplasmic terminus) was expressed and purified from insect cells. After incubating PLCG1 with insulin receptor in vitro for 30 min in the presence of ATP, PLCG1 phosphorylation was determined by HPLC-ESI-MS/MS. The result demonstrated that insulin receptor phosphorylated Tyr771 of PLCG1. Western blotting using pTyr771 specific antibodies confirmed these findings.

In summary, these results suggest that reduced insulin-stimulated pTyr771 may contribute to the development of insulin resistance and T2D, and the insulin receptor is an upstream regulator of PLCG1 pTyr771.

Disclosure

X. Zhang: None. A.H. Mestareehi: None. B. Seyoum: None. Z. Yi: None.

Funding

American Diabetes Association (1-13-TS-27 to Z.Y.); National Institutes of Health (R01DK107666, R01DK081750 to Z.Y.), (T32HL120822 to A.H.M.); DOTS Scholars (to A.H.M., Z.Y.)

© 2020 by the American Diabetes Association
2020
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