Insulin is synthesized in its immature form, pre-proinsulin, at the endoplasmic reticulum level [1]. After its conversion into proinsulin, it is transported to the trans Golgi network (TGN) and then translocated into insulin secretory granules (ISG) [1]. At this level, the acidification of the luminal pH is supposed to be necessary for both the conversion of proinsulin into active insulin (with release of the C-peptide fragment) and for the ISG maturation and secretion at the plasma membrane level [1], [2]. Despite the crucial role played by pH regulation, a direct and accurate measurement of the absolute pH of ISGs in living cells is still missing. The very first measurements of granule intraluminal pH, performed almost 40 years ago, demonstrated that the pH of the ISG is in the 5.0 to 6.0 range, and that maintaining the acidic condition is ATP-dependent. Yet these measurements referred to isolated granules, i.e. outside the realm natural cellular environment [3], [4]. The almost concomitant advent of pH-sensitive fluorescent probes paved the way to direct investigations of granule pH within living cells. In a seminal study, Pace and Sachs used the weak base Acridine Orange (AO) as pH probe [5]. They showed that β-cell granules in islet cultures could accumulate AO with a characteristic red shift, highlighting the presence of a pH gradient across the granule membrane (i.e. between granule lumen and cell cytoplasm) [5]. Unfortunately, due to the intrinsic photophysical characteristics of AO, it was not possible to provide a reliable estimate of the actual pH value of granules in cells. With similar limitations, in 2001 Barg and colleagues monitored granular pH by supplementing the extracellular solution with LysoSensor Green DND-189, a fluorescent probe, whose fluorescence intensity increases as pH decreases [6]. Although not quantitative in terms of absolute pH, the authors were able to confirm that granular acidification (driven by a V-type H+-ATPase in the granular membrane) is a decisive step in granule priming for exocytosis [6]. Following a similar approach, Stiernet and colleagues measured granule pH in islets but using Lysosensor DND-160, a variant allowing, in principle, ratiometric determination of absolute pH values in acidic compartments [7]. Yet, results were presented in terms of pH differences, rather than in terms of absolute pH. Still, the authors were able to show that an increase in glucose concentration induces rapid and reversible decrease in granular pH in a metabolism and chloride dependent manner [7]. By contrast, in a similar experiment using the fluorescent pH indicator Lysosensor Green DND-189, Eto and colleagues observed that, upon glucose stimulation, the pH of ISG in pancreatic β-cells, was alkalinized by approximately 0.016 pH units [8]. At this stage, it is important to note that in the attempts reviewed so far, researchers employed dyes (such as acridine orange and Lysosensor variants) that are not specific to insulin granules but distribute across all acidic compartments of the cell, including endosomes and lysosomes, potentially affecting the final pH measurement. To bypass these limitations, Tompkins and colleagues, in 2002, targeted a genetically encoded pH sensor in the form of the pH-sensitive variant of green fluorescent protein (EGFP F64L/S65T) to insulin secretory vesicles in RIN1046-38 insulinoma cells by fusing the sensing moiety to the N-terminal leader sequence of human growth hormone [9]. The authors observed that glucose stimulation induces a decrease in granule pH, whereas inhibitors of the V-type H-ATPase increase pH and impair glucose effect [9]. Although specifically targeted to the insulin secretory pathway, this GFP-based pH sensor was intrinsically non-ratiometric, i.e. it reported only relative pH changes among different conditions. Worthy of mention, an attempt to overcome current limitations was performed by Neukman and co-workers sending a quantitative pH reporter to the granule (i.e. eCFP fused to the ICA512-RESP18 homology domain in INS-1 cells) but has so far remained in the form of an unpublished contribution [10].
To summarize, none of the reports available in the literature satisfy the two requirements of a reliable measurement of absolute pH in the ISG, i.e. i) specific targeting of the pH reporter in the insulin secretory pathway and ii) calibration of the reporter to obtain absolute pH values within the desired range. To tackle both issues simultaneously, we inserted the ratiometric and genetically encoded E1GFP pH reporter within the C-peptide (C-pep) of proinsulin (See Fig. 3a). E1GFP was selected as it is endowed with a pKa close to 6.0 and it demonstrated to be suitable for absolute pH measurements in acidic compartments [11]. Additionally, the insertion of E1GFP into the C-pep was shown not to alter the sorting of the whole adduct into the ISG [12], [13], [14]. Phasor-based FLIM was used as a fast, robust, and fit-free method to measure ISG luminal pH independently of probe concentration, while also providing a spatial map of pH values. Our results confirmed the acidic nature of insulin granules under maintenance cell-culturing conditions, with an average luminal pH of ~ 5.8, and showed that acidity is actively maintained, as evidenced by its near-neutralization upon treatment with the vacuolar H+-ATPase inhibitor Concanamycin. Additionally, by leveraging the intrinsic spatial resolution of FLIM, we highlighted that granules proximal to the plasma membrane are slightly more acidic (~ 0.1 pH units) with respect to distal once, a difference preserved even during the early phase of glucose-induced secretion.