Estrogen Control of Uterine Glucose Metabolism

Abstract

During incubation in vitro, uterine tissue readily converts the nonutilizable sugar, Z-deoxyglucose-lJ4C, to P-deoxyglucose-6-PJ4C.This process appears to be analogous to transport and phosphorylation of glucose and is a sensitive measure of the activity in the early steps of uterine sugar metabolism.Nonradioactive 2-deoxyglucose-lJ4C and Dglucose show similar inhibition of 2-deoxyglucose-lJ4C phosphorylation at equimolar concentrations, but %-O-methylglucose does not inhibit this reaction.Conversion of 2deoxyglucose-1-W to 2-deoxyglucose-6-PJ4C by uteri from rats treated for 1 hour with 5 pg of estradiol-178 showed a 135% increase above control values, and this conversion rate continues to increase with longer periods of hormone treatment.The results show that e&radio1 accelerates either the transport or phosphorylation steps in early uterine sugar metabolism.Kinetic analyses indicate that estradiol increases the tissue V,,, for 2-deoxyglucose-lJ4C phosphorylation without changing the tissue &.Cycloheximide injected 30 min prior to estradiol abolishes the effect of the hormone, implying that the development of this metabolic response is dependent on protein synthesis.