Superoxide anion and arachidonic acid were produced in guinea pig neutrophils in response to a chemotactic peptide formyl-methionyl-leucyl-phenylalanine (fMLP). Both responses were markedly, but the former response to a phorbol ester was not at all, inhibited when the cellular cAMP level was raised by prostaglandin E 1 combined with a cAMP phosphodiesterase inhibitor. Increasing cAMP was also inhibitory to fMLPinduced activation of phosphatidylinositol (PI) 3-kinase and Ca 2؉ influx without any effect on the cation mobilization from intracellular stores. The fMLP-induced respiratory burst was abolished when PI 3-kinase was inhibited by wortmannin or LY294002, but was not affected when Ca 2؉ influx was inhibited. On the contrary, fMLP released arachidonic acid from the cells treated with the PI 3-kinase inhibitors as well as from nontreated cells, but it did not so when cellular Ca 2؉ uptake was prevented. The chemotactic peptide activated PI 3-kinase even in cells in which the receptor-mediated intracellular Ca 2؉ mobilization and respiratory burst were both abolished by exposure of the cells to a permeable Ca 2؉ -chelating agent. Thus, stimulation of fMLP receptors gave rise to dual effects, activation of PI 3-kinase and intracellular Ca 2؉ mobilization; both effects were necessary for the fMLP-induced respiratory burst. Increasing cellular cAMP inhibited the respiratory burst and arachidonic acid release as a result of the inhibitions of PI 3-kinase and Ca 2؉ influx, respectively, in fMLP-treated neutrophils.The intracellular signaling pathways responsible for the formyl-methionyl-leucyl-phenylalanine (fMLP) 1 -induced respiratory burst in phagocytes remain to be fully understood as yet, although the activation mechanism of the respiratory burst oxidase is currently elucidated as an assembly of a number of membrane-bound and cytosolic components, including gp91 In general, one of the best strategies for identification of essential cellular signals involved in a cell response to a receptor stimulation is to search for the target with which an inhibitor interacts to abolish the response efficiently. Pertussis toxin was a good inhibitor and was successfully applied to the fMLPinduced respiratory burst. Prior exposure of guinea pig neutrophils to low concentrations of pertussis toxin for several hours prevented the cells from producing superoxide anion in response to the subsequent addition of fMLP (2). The prevention resulted from the toxin-induced ADP-ribosylation of G protein (Gi-2), the chemical modification by which the modified G protein is uncoupled from receptors. Evidence has been thus provided for involvement of the G protein in the fMLP-induced respiratory burst via phospholipase C activation (2-4).An additional example of useful inhibitors of the phagocytic respiratory burst is wortmannin, a fungal metabolite with hydrophobic sterol structure. Baggiolini and his colleagues (5, 6) first reported that incubation of human neutrophils with wortmannin or 17-hydroxywortmannin for 5 min inhibited fMLPinduced ...