Clinical and experimental studies showed that estrogen has antiatherogenic effects. We previously demonstrated that the estrogen receptor (ER) mRNA and protein are expressed in vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMC) derived from rat aorta. Here. the expression of isoforms of the ER was examined in VSMC. Reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction using specific primers for rat ER cDNA was performed from RNA of rat VSMC. This revealed the existence of ER cDNA that is shorter than the wild-type ER cDNA. Sequencing of the amplified products identified three isoforms of the ER and the wild-type ER. These ER mRNA isoforms lacked the region corresponding to exon 4, exon 4 and 5, and exon 3 and 4. Therefore, they were designated as ER Delta 4 isoform, ER Delta 4/5 isoform and ER Delta 3/4 isoform, respectively. Chloramphenicol acetyltransferase assay was performed with these ER isoforms constructed into the expression vector and the reporter plasmid containing the estrogen responsive element. The assay showed that these ER isoforms lost estrogen-dependent transactivation activities and that ER Delta 4/5 isoform has a inhibitory effect on normal estrogen action when it was cotransfected with the wild-type ER. These ER isoforms might be involved in the regulation of VSMC by estrogen. (C) 1996 Academic Press, Inc.
