RESEARCH ARTICLE Dephosphorylation of the NPR2 guanylyl cyclase contributes to inhibition of bone growth by fibroblast growth factor Leia C Shuhaibar1*, Jerid W Robinson2†, Giulia Vigone1†, Ninna P Shuhaibar1, Jeremy R Egbert1, Valentina Baena1, Tracy F Uliasz1, Deborah Kaback1, Siu-Pok Yee1, Robert Feil3, Melanie C Fisher4, Caroline N Dealy4, Lincoln R Potter2*, Laurinda A Jaffe1* 1Department of Cell Biology, University of Connecticut Health Center, Farmington, United States; 2Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Biophysics, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, United States; 3Interfakulta¨ res Institut fu¨ r Biochemie, University of Tu¨ bingen, Tu¨ bingen, Germany; 4Center for Regenerative Medicine and Skeletal Development, University of Connecticut Health Center, Farmington, United States Abstract Activating mutations in fibroblast growth factor (FGF) receptor 3 and inactivating mutations in the NPR2 guanylyl cyclase both cause severe short stature, but how these two signaling systems interact to regulate bone growth is poorly understood. Here, we show that bone elongation is increased when NPR2 cannot be dephosphorylated and thus produces more cyclic GMP. By developing an in vivo imaging system to measure cyclic GMP production in intact tibia, we show that FGF-induced dephosphorylation of NPR2 decreases its guanylyl cyclase activity in *For correspondence: growth plate chondrocytes in living bone. The dephosphorylation requires a PPP-family
[email protected] (LCS); phosphatase. Thus FGF signaling lowers cyclic GMP production in the growth plate, which
[email protected] (LRP); counteracts bone elongation. These results define a new component of the signaling network by
[email protected] (LAJ) which activating mutations in the FGF receptor inhibit bone growth. †These authors contributed DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.31343.001 equally to this work Competing interests: The authors declare that no Introduction competing interests exist.