Effect of Hydrocortisone on the Ability of Thyrotropin to Increase Deoxyribonucleic Acid Synthesis and Iodide Uptake in FRTL-5 Rat Thyroid Cells: Opposite Regulation of Adenosine 3\5'-Monophosphate Signal Action

Abstract

In FRTL-5 rat thyroid cells, hydrocortisone alters two TSH-increased cAMP-mediated activities in an opposite manner. Thus, in a concentration-dependent fashion, hydrocortisone synergistically enhances TSH-increased thymidine incorporation into DNA, whereas it inhibits TSH-induced iodide uptake. The effect of hydrocortisone on TSH-increased thymidine incorporation is specific, in that it has only a minimal ability by itself to increase thymidine incorporation into DNA and slightly inhibits the activity of insulin or insulin-like growth factor-I. The effect of hydrocortisone on TSH-induced iodide uptake does not result from altered iodide efflux, but, rather, from a decrease in the maximal velocity, not the Km, of iodide influx, i.e. from a decrease in the effective number of iodide porters. The action of a cAMP analog to increase thymidine incorporation into DNA or iodide uptake was also increased or decreased, respectively, by hydrocortisone, whereas hydrocortisone did not diminish the ability of TSH to increase cAMP levels in the cells. The different effect of hydrocortisone on these two cAMP-mediated activities reflects, therefore, regulation of cAMP signal action rather than the ability of TSH to generate a cAMP signal. Twenty-four hours after TSH, actinomycin-D superinduces iodide uptake and abolishes the action of hydrocortisone to inhibit iodide uptake. It has been suggested that actinomycin-D superinduces iodide uptake in FRTL-5 cells by a posttranscriptional action, inhibition of mRNA degradation, rather than by its known transcriptional actions linked to DNA synthesis. More recent studies of the effect of actinomycin-D, given under identical circumstances, on TSH-stimulated malic enzyme mRNA levels directly validate this hypothesis. We, thus, suggest that the opposite action of hydrocortisone on the two cAMP-mediated activities may reflect positive and negative regulation of the action of cAMP at different steps in the transduction process, one being transcriptional (DNA synthesis) and the other posttranscriptional (induction of iodide porter activity).