Cloning and characterization of diacylglycerol kinase iota splice variants in rat brain.

Diacylglycerol kinase (DGK) catalyzes phosphorylation of a second messenger diacylglycerol (DG) to phosphatidic acid in cellular signal transduction. Previous studies have revealed that DGK consists of a family of isozymes including our rat clones. In this study we isolated from rat brain cDNA library the cDNA clones for a rat homologue of DGKiota (rDGKiota-1) that contains two zinc finger-like sequences, the highly conserved DGK catalytic domain, a bipartite nuclear localization signal, and four ankyrin repeats at the carboxyl terminus. In addition, we found novel splice variants, which contain either insertion 1 (71 bp) or insertion 2 (19 bp) or both in the carboxyl-terminal portion. Each of the insertions causes a frameshift, and the resultant premature stop codons produce two truncated forms (termed rDGKiota-2 and -iota-3), the former lacking the ankyrin repeats at the carboxyl terminus and the latter lacking a part of the catalytic domain and the ankyrin repeats. Truncation of the carboxyl-terminal portion clearly exerts effects on the detergent solubility and enzymatic activity of the splice variants, although all three variants showed similar cytoplasmic localization in cDNA-transfected cultured neurons despite the continued presence of the nuclear localization signal sequence. Immunoblot analysis using anti-rDGKiota antibody raised against the common amino-terminal portion clearly shows that these rDGKiota variants are indeed expressed in the brain. These results suggest that the carboxyl-terminal truncated forms of rDGKiota-2 and -iota-3 that exhibit reduced enzymatic activities might show a dominant negative effect against the intact rDGKiota-1, and that the modulation of signal transduction by the splice variants may play some roles in the physiologic and/or pathologic conditions of neurons.