Project description:Cold affects many aspects of biology, medicine, agriculture and industry. Here, we identify a conserved endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress response, distinct from the canonical unfolded protein response, which maintains lipid homeostasis during extreme cold stress. We establish that the ER stress sensor IRE-1 is critical for resistance to extreme cold and is activated by cold temperature. Specifically, neuronal IRE-1 signals via JNK-1 and neuropeptide-mediated signalling to regulate lipid composition throughout the animal. The requirement of this cold-response pathway can be bypassed by supplementation with unsaturated fatty acids or by altering the diet . Altogether, our findings define an ER-centric conserved organism-wide cold stress response pathway, consisting of sensors, effectors and signalling moieties, which control adaptation to cold throughout the organism. Better understanding of the molecular basis of cold adaptation is crucial for the design of safe and optimal use of cold conditions on live organisms and samples, and for the development of better treatments for hypothermia. Conclusions: Our study represents a detailed analysis of C.elegans transcriptomes during cold stress, with biological replicates, generated by RNA-seq technology.
Project description:Membrane integrity at the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is tightly regulated and its disturbance is implicated in metabolic diseases. Using an engineered sensor that activates the unfolded protein response (UPR) exclusively when normal ER membrane lipid composition is compromised, we identified pathways beyond lipid metabolism that are necessary to maintain ER integrity in yeast and in C. elegans. To systematically validate yeast mutants that disrupt ER membrane homeostasis, we identified a lipid bilayer stress (LBS) sensor in the UPR transducer protein Ire1, located at the interface of the amphipathic and transmembrane helices. Furthermore, transcriptome and chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) analyses pinpoint the UPR as a broad-spectrum compensatory response wherein LBS and proteotoxic stress deploy divergent transcriptional UPR programs. Together, these findings reveal the UPR program as the sum of two independent stress responses, an insight that could be exploited for future therapeutic intervention.
Project description:The endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is an organelle associated with lipid metabolism. However, the involvement of the ER in nutritional status-dependent energy homeostasis is largely unknown. The results of this study demonstrate that IRE-1, an ER protein known to be involved in the unfolded protein response, and HSP-4, an ER chaperone, regulate expression of the novel fasting-induced lipases FIL-1 and FIL-2, which induce fat granule hydrolysis upon fasting in C. elegans. RNAi and ectopic expression experiments demostrated that FIL-1 and FIL-2 are both necessary and sufficient for fasting-induced fat granule breakdown. Failure of ire-1 and hsp-4 mutant animals to hydrolyze fat granules during starvation impaired their motility, which was rescued by glucose supplementation of their media, implicating the importance of ire-1/hsp-4-dependent lipolysis for energy supply from stored fat during fasting. Taken together, these data suggest that the ER-resident proteins IRE-1 and HSP-4 are key nutritional sensors that modulate expression of inducible lipases to maintain whole-body energy homeostasis in C. elegans. Synchronized L4 worms were divided into well-fed and 6 hours fasted samples for RNA extraction and hybridization on an Agilent microarray.
Project description:The endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is an organelle associated with lipid metabolism. However, the involvement of the ER in nutritional status-dependent energy homeostasis is largely unknown. The results of this study demonstrate that IRE-1, an ER protein known to be involved in the unfolded protein response, and HSP-4, an ER chaperone, regulate expression of the novel fasting-induced lipases FIL-1 and FIL-2, which induce fat granule hydrolysis upon fasting in C. elegans. RNAi and ectopic expression experiments demostrated that FIL-1 and FIL-2 are both necessary and sufficient for fasting-induced fat granule breakdown. Failure of ire-1 and hsp-4 mutant animals to hydrolyze fat granules during starvation impaired their motility, which was rescued by glucose supplementation of their media, implicating the importance of ire-1/hsp-4-dependent lipolysis for energy supply from stored fat during fasting. Taken together, these data suggest that the ER-resident proteins IRE-1 and HSP-4 are key nutritional sensors that modulate expression of inducible lipases to maintain whole-body energy homeostasis in C. elegans.
Project description:Metabolic diseases are strongly associated with endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress. Upon ER stress, the unfolded protein response (UPR) is activated to limit cellular damage. However, escalating cellular UPR response weakens with age. Here, we show that 5-day-old Caenorhabditis elegans fed a bacteria diet with 2% glucose (high glucose diet, HGD-5) extend their lifespan while shortening the lifespan of 1-day-old (HGD-1) animals. We observed a metabolic shift in HGD-1 as glucose and fertility synergistically prolonged the lifespan of HGD-5, independently of DAF-16. Notably, we identified that UPR stress sensors ATF-6 and PEK-1 extended the longevity of HGD-5 worms, while the ire-1 ablation drastically increased HGD-1 lifespan. Based on these observations, we postulate that HGD activates the otherwise quiescent UPR in aged worms to overcome ageing-related stress and restore ER homeostasis. In contrast, young animals subjected to HGD provokes unresolved ER stress, conversely leading to a detrimental stress response.
Project description:S4, a sulfonamide drug, has been confirmed to induce apoptosis and autophagy in cancer cells. Immunogenic cell death is a special cell death type which is closely related to apoptosis and autophagy. We performed RNA-seq to determine the impact of S4 on global gene expression profile in LN229 cells. Our results show that S4 induces immunogenic cell death via the response to endoplasmic reticulum stress.
Project description:The crucial role of lipid metabolism disorders and neuronal inflammation has been revealed in many studies of neurodegenerative diseases. However, the pathological connection between lipid droplets and neuronal immune circuits remains poorly understood. We have previously reported a neuronal-specific Arf1-knockout mouse as an ideal lipid metabolism disorder-induced neurodegeneration model. Here, we found that Arf1-deficiency first induced surplus fatty acid synthesis and lipid droplets (LDs) accumulation through the AKT-mTORC1-SREBP1-FASN axis, which further triggered endoplasmic reticulum (ER)-mitochondrial stress cascade via calcium flux. The organelle stress cascade further induced mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) to be released into the cytoplasm. Meanwhile, the FASN-driven fatty acid synthesis in the Arf1-deficient neurons also induced lysosomal sphingolipids accumulation that caused dysfunction of autophagy and lysosomes, which enables the neuronal mtDNA to transfer to microglia via extracellular vesicles (EVs) and activates the inflammatory pathways to aggravate neurodegeneration. Furthermore, inhibition of FASN or boosting autophagy in vivo reversed neuronal degeneration disease in Arf1-knockout mice. Our study suggests a unified pathological function of LD in NDs and proves that inhibition of fatty acid synthesis-induced inflammation might be a therapeutic route to neuronal degeneration disease.
Project description:Mitophagy is one of the most important cellular processes to ensure mitochondrial quality control, which aims to transport damaged, dysfunctional, or excess mitochondria for degradation and reuse. Here, we determined the function of AoAtg11 and AoAtg33, two orthologous autophagy-related proteins involved in yeast mitophagy, in the typical nematode-trapping fungus Arthrobotrys oligospora . Deletion of Aoatg11 and Aoatg33 impairs mitophagy, mitochondrial morphology and activity, autophagy,cell apoptosis, reactive oxygen species levels, lipid droplet accumulation, and endocytosis. These combined effects resulted in slow vegetative growth; reduced conidiation, trap formation, cell nucleus, and extracellular protease activity; increased susceptibility to the stress response; and arthrobotrisin production in the Δ Aoatg11 and Δ Aoatg33 mutants, compared with the wild-type strain. In addition, the absence of Aoatg11 caused an endoplasmic reticulum stress response. Transcriptome analysis revealed that many differentially expressed genes in the Δ Aoatg11 mutants were involved in various important cellular processes, such as lipid metabolism, the TCA cycle, mitophagy, nitrogen metabolism, endocytosis, and the MAPK signaling pathway. In conclusion, our study revealed that Aoatg11 and Aoatg33 mediate autophagy and mitophagy in A. oligospora , and provides a basis for elucidating the links between mitophagy and fungal vegetative growth, conidiation, and pathogenicity.
Project description:DNA damage and metabolic disorders are intimately linked with premature disease onset but the underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. Persistent DNA damage accumulation in tissue-infiltrating macrophages carrying an ERCC1-XPF DNA repair defect (Er1F/-) riggers Golgi dispersal, dilation of endoplasmic reticulum, autophagy and exosome biogenesis leading to the secretion of extracellular vesicles (EVs) in vivo and ex vivo.