In Metabolic conditions causing loss of lean body mass raise questions about how these disturbances activate mechanisms that change protein metabolism. For example, when metabolic acidosis is present, there is evidence for excessive protein catabolism. Metabolic acidosis causes infants and children to grow poorly (1, 2), and Reaich et al. (3) showed that induction of metabolic acidosis in normal adults by administration of ammonium chloride accelerated catabolism of both protein and branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs). Experimental metabolic acidosis in rats reduces growth and stimulates whole body proteolysis and BCAA catabolism (4-6). Even though these reports document that acidosis stimulates protein catabolism, they do not identify which tissues exhibit accelerated proteolysis nor do they elucidate cellular mechanisms causing proteolysis.May et al. (4) showed that acidosis accelerates protein degradation in rat muscle, and there is evidence that this catabolic response involves activation of the ATP-dependent, ubiquitin-proteasome proteolytic pathway (7). This proteolytic system requires ATP for conjugation of ubiquitin to lysines in proteins targeted for degradation. ATP is also required for degradation of the protein substrates by the 26S proteasome, a multicatalytic enzyme complex composed of multiple sub-The publication costs of this article were defrayed in part by page charge payment. This article must therefore be hereby marked "advertisement" in accordance with 18 U.S.C. §1734 solely to indicate this fact. units (8-10). Metabolic acidosis increases not only ATPdependent proteolysis in muscle but also the levels of mRNAs encoding proteins of the ATP-dependent ubiquitin-proteasome pathway (7).A potential mediator of muscle proteolysis in acidosis is glucocorticoids since we found that proteolysis was not stimulated in muscles of adrenalectomized rats unless they were given glucocorticoids (4). Interpretation of these results is complicated because other factors that could regulate protein turnover and gene expression, including insulin (11), prostaglandins (12), and cytokines (13-16), could change in adrenalectomized rats.We studied cultured BC3H1 myocytes to identify relationships among acidification, glucocorticoids, proteolysis, and the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway without the complexities present in adrenalectomized rats. These cells were studied because they do not rapidly acidify the medium unlike C2, C2/C12, or L6 myotubes (unpublished data), and we found that acidification of the medium stimulates protein degradation in BC3H1 myocytes (17). In those experiments, we could not link excess glucocorticoids to stimulation of proteolysis. To elucidate whether there is an interaction between acidification and glucocorticoids, we used three strategies. First, we determined whether BC3H1 myocytes express functional glucocorticoid receptors. Next, we studied protein degradation in cells maintained in medium with 1% serum to reduce the exposure to glucocorticoids and to minimize the influence of ot...