Nerve growth factor-induced changes in neural cell adhesion molecule (N-CAM) in PC12 cells.

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Abstract
The effects of nerve growth factor (NGF) on the expression of neural cell adhesion molecule (N‐CAM) in PC12 cells were determined. A quantitative immunoassay was used to show that NGF induces a 4‐ to 5‐fold increase in relative N‐CAM levels over a 3‐day period. This increase could not be mimicked by cholera toxin suggesting that it is not a simple consequence of morphological differentiation. The changes in N‐CAM levels induced by NGF were accompanied by changes in N‐CAM molecular forms. The 140‐kd N‐CAM species is the major N‐CAM expressed by naive PC12 cells, while NGF‐treated cultures express N‐CAM species of 180 kd and 140 kd. Northern analysis showed that naive cells express a 6.7‐kd N‐CAM mRNA species only, while NGF‐treated cultures express both a 6.7‐kb and a 7.2‐kb transcript. As the 6.7‐kb and 7.2‐kb mRNAs are alternative spliced transcripts of a single gene, this result shows that NGF can activate a neuron‐specific splicing mechanism. This is the first description of control of N‐CAM expression by a growth factor.