Lodeiro, MariaTheodoropoulou, MarilyPardo Pérez, MaríaCasanueva Freijo, FelipePérez Camiña, Jesús2020-06-062020-06-062009Lodeiro M, Theodoropoulou M, Pardo M, Casanueva FF, Camiña JP (2009) c-Src Regulates Akt Signaling in Response to Ghrelin via β-Arrestin Signaling-Independent and -Dependent Mechanisms. PLoS ONE 4(3): e4686. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0004686http://hdl.handle.net/10347/22835The aim of the present study was to identify the signaling mechanisms to ghrelin-stimulated activation of the serine/threonine kinase Akt. In human embryonic kidney 293 (HEK293) cells transfected with GHS-R1a, ghrelin leads to the activation of Akt through the interplay of distinct signaling mechanisms: an early Gi/o protein-dependent pathway and a late pathway mediated by β-arrestins. The starting point is the Gi/o-protein dependent PI3K activation that leads to the membrane recruitment of Akt, which is phosphorylated at Y by c-Src with the subsequent phosphorylation at A-loop (T308) and HM (S473) by PDK1 and mTORC2, respectively. Once the receptor is activated, a second signaling pathway is mediated by β-arrestins 1 and 2, involving the recruitment of at least β-arrestins, c-Src and Akt. This β-arrestin-scaffolded complex leads to full activation of Akt through PDK1 and mTORC2, which are not associated to the complex. In agreement with these results, assays performed in 3T3-L1 preadipocyte cells indicate that β-arrestins and c-Src are implicated in the activation of Akt in response to ghrelin through the GHS-R1a. In summary this work reveals that c-Src is crucially involved in the ghrelin-mediated Akt activation. Furthermore, the results support the view that β-arrestins act as both scaffolding proteins and signal transducers on Akt activationengCopyright: © 2009 Lodeiro et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are creditedhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0c-Src tyrosine kinaseCell transient transfectionHuman embryonic kidney 293 (HEK293)journal article10.1371/journal.pone.00046861932-6203open access