We previously showed that in polarized Madin-Darby canine kidney (MDCK) cells, aquaporin-2 (AQP2) is continuously targeted to the basolateral plasma membrane from which it is rapidly retrieved by clathrin-mediated endocytosis. It then undertakes microtubule-dependent transcytosis toward the apical plasma membrane. In this study, we found that treatment with chlorpromazine (CPZ, an inhibitor of clathrin-mediated endocytosis) results in AQP2 accumulation in the basolateral, but not the apical plasma membrane of epithelial cells. In MDCK cells, both AQP2 and clathrin were concentrated in the basolateral plasma membrane after CPZ treatment (100 µM for 15 min), and endocytosis was reduced. Then, using rhodamine phalloidin staining, we found that basolateral, but not apical, F-actin was selectively reduced by CPZ treatment. After incubation of rat kidney slices in situ with CPZ (200 µM for 15 min), basolateral AQP2 and clathrin were increased in principal cells, which simultaneously showed a significant decrease of basolateral compared to apical F-actin staining. These results indicate that clathrin-dependent transcytosis of AQP2 is an essential part of its trafficking pathway in renal epithelial cells and that this process can be inhibited by selectively depolymerizing the basolateral actin pool using CPZ.Cells 2020, 9, 1057 2 of 18 mechanisms of water channel accumulation in the apical plasma membrane of collecting duct cells have been of particular interest, the regulation of basolateral AQP2 has also been investigated in several studies [22][23][24][25][26]. In the cortical connecting segment, basolateral AQP2 is usually readily detectable [23], and AQP2 has varying levels of basolateral expression in collecting duct principal cells from kidney cortex to medulla, with the most obvious basolateral expression in the inner medulla. In MDCK cells, derived from canine kidney, transfected AQP2 usually accumulates in the apical membrane upon intracellular cAMP elevation. However, AQP2 instead concentrates on the basolateral membrane after forskolin (FK) treatment under hypertonic conditions [26]. Importantly, Sec6, Sec8, and RalA, all components of the exocyst, which targets proteins to the basolateral plasma membrane [27], were associated with AQP2-containing vesicles upon mass spectrometry analysis [28]. Furthermore, we showed that AQP2 is necessary for cell migration and tubule morphogenesis through its RGD-regulated interaction with basolateral integrin-β1 [29]. These previous findings all pointed to the existence of an AQP2 basolateral targeting pathway, and indeed we demonstrated the existence of a transcytotic pathway for AQP2 in MDCK cells by blocking basolateral AQP2 during its transit through this membrane domain using low temperature [30]. After initial basolateral targeting, AQP2 is retrieved into Rab5-positive vesicles, then undertakes microtubule-dependent transcytosis to apical recycling vesicles [30]. This novel trafficking concept is supported by an apical plasma membrane proteomics study using mpkCCD cel...