Summary
Inflammation is characterized by endothelium that highly expresses numerous adhesion molecules to trigger leukocyte extravasation. Central to this event is increased gene transcription. Small Rho-GTPases not only control the actin cytoskeleton, but are also implicated in gene regulation. However, in inflammation, it is not clear how this is regulated. Here, we show that the guanine-nucleotide exchange factor Trio expression is increased upon inflammatory stimuli in endothelium. Additionally, increased Trio expression was found in the vessel wall of rheumatoid arthritis patients. Trio silencing impaired VCAM-1 expression. Finally, we excluded that Trio-controlled VCAM-1 expression used the classical NFκB or MAP-kinase pathways, but rather acts on the transcriptional level by increasing phosphorylation and nuclear translocalization of Ets2. These data implicate Trio in regulating inflammation and provide novel targets for therapeutic purposes to treat inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis.
Footnotes
Author Contributions J.v.R. and J.D.v.B. designed the experiments, performed the research, wrote the manuscript and analyzed the data. I.T., F.P.J.v.A., M.H., J.G. and H.W.M.N. performed the research. O.K., D.G. and K.A.R. contributed vital new reagents.
Competing interests The authors have no competing interests to declare.
- Received February 10, 2013.
- Accepted March 20, 2013.
- © 2013. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/).