Nur77 Increases Glucose Transport in Mouse Skeletal Muscle Cells by Activating p38MAPK Under Lipotoxicity

Abstract

Diabetes Mellitus (DM) is a common disease in clinic and belongs to a metabolic disease. Related studies have shown that Nur77 regulates sugar metabolism in a variety of tissue cells. Nur77 (orphan nuclear receptor) is a transcription factor and involves in glucose metabolism are different in skeletal muscle cells via p38MAPK signaling pathway. In the study, an IR model was to explore the mechanism of skeletal muscle IR. L6 myocytes were cultured and control, Nur77 knockout and Nur77 overexpression group was set followed by analysis of L6 muscle cell morphology, activity by MTT assay, glucose concentration by glucose oxidase-peroxidase (GOD-POD) p-p38MAPK and skeletal muscle glucose transporter-4 (GLUT4) level by western blot. After 8 to 12 hours of culture, the boundaries between cells were unknown with irregular order and no muscle-shaped structure. The cell morphology was mainly spindle-shaped and triangular. After 2 to 3 days, cell arrangement was regular and morphology was mainly spindle-shaped. The cell activity and glucose concentration in control group at different time points showed no differences which were significantly different in knockout and overexpression group with significantly higher cell activity and glucose concentration for overexpression group than knockout and control group (P < 0.05). In addition, overexpression group also showed significantly increased expression of p-p38MAPK4 and GLUT4. Nur77 can increase glucose transport under lipotoxic state by activating p38MAPK signaling pathway and increasing the protein expression of p-p38MAPK and GLUT4 in muscle cells.