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Mitochondrial enzymes are protected from stress-induced aggregation by mitochondrial chaperones and the Pim1/LON protease.

ABSTRACT: Proteins in a natural environment are constantly challenged by stress conditions, causing their destabilization, unfolding, and, ultimately, aggregation. Protein aggregation has been associated with a wide variety of pathological conditions, especially neurodegenerative disorders, stressing the importance of adequate cellular protein quality control measures to counteract aggregate formation. To secure protein homeostasis, mitochondria contain an elaborate protein quality control system, consisting of chaperones and ATP-dependent proteases. To determine the effects of protein aggregation on the functional integrity of mitochondria, we set out to identify aggregation-prone endogenous mitochondrial proteins. We could show that major metabolic pathways in mitochondria were affected by the aggregation of key enzyme components, which were largely inactivated after heat stress. Furthermore, treatment with elevated levels of reactive oxygen species strongly influenced the aggregation behavior, in particular in combination with elevated temperatures. Using specific chaperone mutant strains, we showed a protective effect of the mitochondrial Hsp70 and Hsp60 chaperone systems. Moreover, accumulation of aggregated polypeptides was strongly decreased by the AAA-protease Pim1/LON. We therefore propose that the proteolytic breakdown of aggregation-prone polypeptides represents a major protective strategy to prevent the in vivo formation of aggregates in mitochondria.

SUBMITTER: Bender T

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3046053 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Mitochondrial enzymes are protected from stress-induced aggregation by mitochondrial chaperones and the Pim1/LON protease.

Bender Tom T Lewrenz Ilka I Franken Sebastian S Baitzel Catherina C Voos Wolfgang W

Molecular biology of the cell 20110105 5

Proteins in a natural environment are constantly challenged by stress conditions, causing their destabilization, unfolding, and, ultimately, aggregation. Protein aggregation has been associated with a wide variety of pathological conditions, especially neurodegenerative disorders, stressing the importance of adequate cellular protein quality control measures to counteract aggregate formation. To secure protein homeostasis, mitochondria contain an elaborate protein quality control system, consist ...[more]

PMID: 21209324

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Project description:Mitochondrial dysfunction is a frequent participant in common diseases and a principal suspect in aging. To combat mitochondrial dysfunction, eukaryotes have evolved a large repertoire of quality control mechanisms. One such mechanism involves the selective degradation of damaged or misfolded mitochondrial proteins by mitochondrial resident proteases, including proteases of the ATPase Associated with diverse cellular Activities (AAA+) family. The importance of the AAA+ family of mitochondrial proteases is exemplified by the fact that mutations that impair their functions cause a variety of human diseases, yet our knowledge of the cellular responses to their inactivation is limited. To address this matter, we created and characterized flies with complete or partial inactivation of the Drosophila matrix-localized AAA+ protease Lon. We found that a Lon null allele confers early larval lethality and that severely reducing Lon expression using RNAi results in shortened lifespan, locomotor impairment, and respiratory defects specific to respiratory chain complexes that contain mitochondrially encoded subunits. The respiratory chain defects of Lon knockdown (Lon KD ) flies appeared to result from severely reduced translation of mitochondrially encoded genes. This translational defect was not a consequence of reduced mitochondrial transcription, as evidenced by the fact that mitochondrial transcripts were elevated in abundance in Lon KD flies. Rather, the translational defect of Lon KD flies appeared to be derived from sequestration of mitochondrially encoded transcripts in highly dense ribonucleoparticles. The translational defect of Lon KD flies was also accompanied by a substantial increase in unfolded mitochondrial proteins. Together, our findings suggest that the accumulation of unfolded mitochondrial proteins triggers a stress response that culminates in the inhibition of mitochondrial translation. Our work provides a foundation to explore the underlying molecular mechanisms.

Dataset Information

Mitochondrial enzymes are protected from stress-induced aggregation by mitochondrial chaperones and the Pim1/LON protease.

Publications

Mitochondrial enzymes are protected from stress-induced aggregation by mitochondrial chaperones and the Pim1/LON protease.

Similar Datasets

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