Pathway of signal delivery to murine thymocytes triggered by Co-crosslinking CD3 and Thy-1 for cellular DNA fragmentation and growth inhibition

The signal delivery pathway triggered by crosslinking CD3 and Thy-1 together (CD3/Thy-1 crosslinkage) on murine thymocytes for cellular DNA fragmentation/growth inhibition was analyzed. The treatment of thymocytes with herbimycin A as a specific tyrosine kinase inhibitor under suboptimum conditions before the CD3/Thy-1 crosslinkage partially but preferentially inhibited the otherwise promoted tyrosine phosphorylation of p40 and p56. Evidence was then provided that acceleration of the kinase activity of p56^lck was involved in the CD3/Thy-1 crosslinkage-triggered signal. Partial characterization of p40 distinguished it from the p43 and p41 MAP kinases, the tyrosine phosphorylation of which was only marginally accelerated. Promotion of DNA fragmentation by the CD3/Thy-1 crosslinkage-triggered signal was actually ablated by the treatment with herbimycin, suggesting the obligatory involvement of the herbimycin highly sensitive kinase activity in the signal pathway. The signal induced by co-crosslinkage of CD3 and Thy-1 was also shown to be negatively biased against mature T lymphocytes, suppressing their CD3-mediated growth response. The negative signal was then found to partially attack the process of c-fos transcription as an earlier nuclear event. Interestingly, this c-fos suppression was prevented by the treatment of thymocytes with herbimycin before stimulation, for accelerated expression of c-fos. It is suggested from these results that the CD3/Thy-1 crosslinkage delivers protein tyrosine kinase-dependent negative signaling for inhibition of early and late nuclear events of both immature thymocytes and mature T lymphocytes.