Reduced gap junctional intercellular communication and altered biological effects in mouse osteoblast and rat liver oval cell lines transfected with dominant-negative connexin 43

Gap junctional intercellular communication (GJIC) maintains normal growth and differentiation of cells in a tissue. The intercellular molecules traversing gap junctions are largely unknown, but the molecular weight (MW) cutoff is normally 1200 Da. No differences in dye transfer were observed in normal or vector controls of WB‐F344 rat liver epithelial or mouse osteoblastic MC3T3‐E1 cells with either Lucifer Yellow (LY) with a MW of 457 Da (LY‐457) or LY with a MW of 649 Da (LY‐649). Transfection of a dominant negative‐connexin 43 (Cx43) gene decreased GJIC (>50%) when LY‐649 was used, however, normal GJIC was observed in both cell lines when LY‐457 was used. Therefore, the MW cut off in these clones was considerably less than the wild type. The dominant negative clones of the MC3T3‐E1 cells exhibited over 90% less alkaline phosphatase (ALPase) activity and calcium deposition after the induction of differentiation. Similarly, dominant negative Cx43 inhibited gene expression of ALPase and bone sialoprotein but not osteocalcin in MC3T3‐E1. WB‐F344 cells normally exhibit a biphasic response to 12‐O‐tetradecanoylphorbol‐13‐acetate (TPA) where inhibition of GJIC recovers after 2 h, but the dominant negative clones showed no recovery from inhibition of GJIC by TPA. Dominant negative Cx43 also inhibited the formation of network‐like structures by WB‐F344 cells on Matrigel. These results demonstrate that the dominant negative gene transfected into cell types containing the wild‐type connexins result in diminished channel sizes, thus allowing the determination of whether distinct biological endpoints, i.e., differentiation, are dependent upon either small or high MW intercellular signals. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.