Insulin causes a dramatic and rapid increase in phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase activity in the anti-phosphotyrosine immunoprecipitates of cells overexpressing the human insulin receptor. This enzyme may therefore be a mediator of insulin signal transduction [Endemann, Yonezawa & Roth (1990) J. Biol. Chem. 265, 396-400; Ruderman, Kapeller, White & Cantley (1990) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 87, 1411-1415]. At least two questions remain to be elucidated. Firstly, does the insulin receptor tyrosine kinase phosphorylate phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase directly, or does it phosphorylate a protein associated with the 3-kinase? Second, if the enzyme is a direct substrate for the insulin receptor tyrosine kinase, does tyrosine phosphorylation of phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase by the kinase alter the specific enzyme activity, or does the amount of the tyrosine-phosphorylated form of the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase increase, with no change in the specific activity? We report here evidence that the 85 kDa subunit of highly purified phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase is phosphorylated on the tyrosine residue by the activated normal insulin receptor in vitro, but not by a mutant insulin receptor which lacks tyrosine kinase activity. We found that an increase in enzyme activity was detected in response to insulin not only in the anti-phosphotyrosine immunoprecipitates of the cytosol, but also in the cytosolic fraction before immunoprecipitation. In addition, we partially separated the tyrosine-phosphorylated form from the unphosphorylated form of the enzyme, by using a f.p.l.c. Mono Q column. The insulin-stimulated phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase activity was mainly detected in the fraction containing almost all of the tyrosine-phosphorylated form. This result suggests that tyrosine phosphorylation of phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase by the insulin receptor kinase may increase the specific activity of the former enzyme in vivo.
Insulin activation of insulin receptor tyrosine kinase in intact rat adipocytes. An in vitro system to measure histone kinase activity of insulin receptors activated in vivo.
