The intermediate filament protein vimentin is a major phosphoprotein in mammalian fibroblasts, and reversible phosphorylation plays a key role in its dynamic rearrangement. Selective inhibition of type 2A but not type 1 protein phosphatases led to hyperphosphorylation and concomitant disassembly of vimentin, characterized by a collapse into bundles around the nucleus. We have analyzed the potential role of one of the major protein phosphatase 2A (PP2A) regulatory subunits, B55, in vimentin dephosphorylation. In mammalian fibroblasts, B55 protein was distributed ubiquitously throughout the cytoplasm with a fraction associated to vimentin. Specific depletion of B55 in living cells by antisense B55 RNA was accompanied by disassembly and increased phosphorylation of vimentin, as when type 2A phosphatases were inhibited using okadaic acid. The presence of B55 was a prerequisite for PP2A to efficiently dephosphorylate vimentin in vitro or to induce filament reassembly in situ. Both biochemical fractionation and immunofluorescence analysis of detergent-extracted cells revealed that fractions of PP2Ac, PR65, and B55 were tightly associated with vimentin. Furthermore, vimentinassociated PP2A catalytic subunit was displaced in B55-depleted cells. Taken together these data show that, in mammalian fibroblasts, the intermediate filament protein vimentin is dephosphorylated by PP2A, an event targeted by B55.
INTRODUCTIONProtein phosphatase 2A (PP2A) is implicated in a significant array of cellular processes, including metabolism, DNA replication, transcription, translation, cell cycle progression, and membrane-to-nuclear signal transduction (for review, see Shenolikar, 1994;Wera and Hemmings, 1995). Regulatory flexibility is conferred by the association of a constant dimeric core of a 36-kDa catalytic (PP2Ac) and a 65-kDa (PR65 or A) subunit with a third, variable B subunit . To date three families of B subunits have been identified, which we will refer to as B55, B56, and B72, according to the predicted molecular weight of their founding member (Mayer et al., 1991;Hendrix et al., 1993a;McCright and Virshup, 1995). At least 10 individual genes code for B-type regulators, with this number being further increased by the additional presence of alternatively spliced forms of certain messages (Hendrix et al., 1993a;Csortos et al., 1996;McCright et al., 1996;Tanabe et al., 1996;Tehrani et al., 1996;Zolnierowicz et al., 1996). By analogy to PP1, in which associated noncatalytic subunits target the catalytic subunit to different subcellular compartments and/or substrates, it was proposed that the B-type regulators act as targeting subunits for PP2A (Hubbard and Cohen, 1993). Indeed, B subunits affect the substrate specificity of PP2A in vitro and in vivo (Agostinis et al., 1987;Cegielska et al., 1994;Kamibayashi et al., 1994;Zhao et al., 1997). Distinct subcellular localization has been reported for some B subunits (McCright et al., 1996;Tehrani et al., 1996). The 55-kDa regulatory subunit B55 (or PR55) was one of the first B-type re...