Ricerc@Sapienza

Prokineticin 2 is a peptide that is widely distributed in the nervous system and influences a variety of brain functions, such as pain, food intake and circadian rhythms. We previously demonstrated that, in the animal model of Alzheimer’s disease, induced by the intracerebroventricular administration of Aβ1-42, there is a modulation of the prokineticin system in rat hippocampus.
Prokineticin 2 is a able to mediate its signaling through two different G-protein coupled receptors, designated PKR1 and PKR2, belonging to the neuropeptide Y receptor class. These two receptors have different tissue distributions: PKR1 is expressed in diverse peripheral organs with relatively high levels in the small intestines and lung, whereas PKR2 is predominantly expressed in the central nervous system. The PKRs activate multiple intracellular signal-transduction pathways: they are Gαq-coupled receptors and promoting intracellular calcium mobilization but they also couple to Gαi (especially PKR2) and Gαs proteins.
In rat hippocampus we identified a mRNA encoding for a PKR2 splice variant, that lacking the second exon, gives rise to a four-transmembrane protein denominated TM 4-7. Expression of this splicing variant in yeast, allowed us to demonstrate that TM 4-7 dimerizes with PKR2 long form and that this heterodimer binds to G protein subtypes with different specificity respect to PKR2 wild-type. Moreover we evidenced that, following Aβ1-42 intracerebroventricular injection in rat, the PKR2 hippocampal levels slightly increased respect to control animals whereas there was a strong up-regulation of the PKR2 splicing variant, TM 4-7. We showed that the increased levels of TM 4-7 determined a modulation of PKR2 signal transduction hindering STAT3 activation.