Aldosterone responsiveness of A6 cells is restored by cloned rat mineralocorticoid receptor

A6 cells, derived from Xenopus laevis renal tubule, form a high-resistance ion-transporting monolayer when grown on permeable supports and can generate a short-circuit current (SCC) that is stimulated by high levels of the mineralocorticoid aldosterone. Surprisingly, A6 SCC is more responsive to glucocorticoids than to mineralocorticoids, suggesting the possibility that these cells do not contain transcriptionally active mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) and that glucocorticoid receptor (GR) mediates MR-like responses in these collecting duct-like cells. We have examined the response of both SCC and a transfected reporter gene to mineralocorticoids and glucocorticoids in the presence and absence of transfected rat MR (rMR). We found that, in the absence of transfected MR, a reporter gene that can be activated by MR or GR was more responsive to glucocorticoids such as dexamethasone and RU-28362 than to mineralocorticoids such as aldosterone. Transfected rMR underwent mineralocorticoid-dependent nuclear localization and restored both transcriptional sensitivity of a reporter gene and SCC response to mineralocorticoids. These data demonstrate that A6 cells contain transcriptionally active GR but not MR and thus suggest a molecular basis for the defect in A6 cell SCC response to aldosterone. Our results also demonstrate that GR is capable of mediating hormone stimulation of SCC, a classic mineralocorticoid response. Finally, the observation that heterologous expression of rMR can localize normally to the A6 nucleus in a hormone-dependent fashion and restore both the transcriptional and SCC response to mineralocorticoids suggests that MR function is conserved in species as distantly related as toads and mammals.