Regulation and function of human inducible nitric oxide synthase

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Inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) produces the bioactive gas NO that has many cell and physiological functions.  iNOS is expressed in all mammals but is regulated in a species specific manner.  As such, studying its regulation and function in humans is needed to understand human cell biology and may have implications for understanding mammalian evolution. The short-term objectives of this Discovery Grant application are to examine new post-translational and transcriptional processes that regulate human iNOS expression and to identify new cell endogenous effects of iNOS-derived NO. The proposed studies are based on our identification of two novel mechanisms that control the induction of human iNOS expression. The first is a positive feedback amplification of iNOS protein expression by NO, which occurs through the activation of mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) that subsequently prevents the proteasome-mediated degradation of iNOS protein. mTOR is a serine/threonine kinase that regulates cell growth and metabolism through increasing mRNA translation. The mechanism by which mTOR increases iNOS protein levels is interesting because little is known about how this kinase affects post-translational processes, such as protein degradation. The second regulatory mechanism that we identified is the need for the transcription factor hypoxia inducible factor-1 (HIF-1) in the cytokine-mediated induction of iNOS gene expression in normoxic conditions. HIF-1 normally controls the response of cells to hypoxia but is increasingly being implicated in non-hypoxia responses. We do not know how cytokines induce the activation of HIF-1 to increase iNOS expression. Given the outstanding issues described, we will examine the poorly understood mechanisms by which mTOR and HIF-1 act to induce iNOS expression.  We will also examine the effects of iNOS-derived NO on cell biological responses. The findings have the potential to expand our knowledge related to the biology of iNOS and NO as well as to identify new cell biological functions of mTOR and HIF-1. The specific aims will be: 1.Determine how mTOR amplifies iNOS protein levels. We will identify post-translational modifications of iNOS that are controlled by NO and mTOR. The effect of these modifications on iNOS protein stability will be determined by mutation studies. 2.Examine the mechanism by which cytokines induce HIF-1 activation to up-regulate iNOS expression. We will examine the signaling mechanisms by which cytokines induce HIF-1 trans-activation of iNOS gene expression as well as the structural motifs in HIF-1a that are needed for this effect. 3.Examine the cell biological effects of iNOS-derived NO. We will use RNA-seq to determine how global gene expression signatures are regulated by iNOS-derived NO. This will provide information on cellular processes that are controlled by iNOS-derived NO. The role of NO in the candidate cellular processes will then be examined experimentally.