Cholesterol Depletion Enhances Adrenergic Signaling in Cardiac Myocytes

Cardiac myocytes endogenously express α and β adrenergic receptors, prototypes of the G-protein coupled receptor superfamily. Depending upon the dose of norepinephrine (agonist) exposure, hypertrophy and apoptosis are initiated by differential induction of two discrete constituents of the transcription factor AP-1, i.e., FosB and Fra-1. We explored differential adrenergic signaling as a paradigm for understanding how cholesterol dictates cells to choose hypertrophy or apoptosis. For this, we used fosB and fra-1 promoter-reporter constructs for monitoring adrenergic signaling. We show that cholesterol depletion enhances norepinephrine-mediated signaling in cardiac myocytes. Importantly, this increased signaling is reduced to original level upon cholesterol replenishment. We used specific ligands for α and β adrenergic receptors and show that the enhanced signaling upon cholesterol depletion is a combined effect of both α and β adrenergic receptors. These results constitute the first report demonstrating the effect of cholesterol on adrenergic signaling using a direct end-point gene expression.