bims-apauto 2022-07-31 papers

bims-apauto

Biomed News

on Apoptosis and autophagy

Issue of 2022–07–31
nine papers selected by
Su Hyun Lee, Seoul National University

A new dawn beyond lysine ubiquitination.
The Ubiquitin-Proteasome System in Apoptosis and Apoptotic Cell Clearance.
Autophagic secretion of mitochondria (ASM): An alternative way for getting rid of damaged mitochondria.
TRIMming down autophagy in breast cancer.
Editorial: Cell Death and Targeted Cancer Therapies.
Conserved requirement of autophagy-related effectors during coronavirus replication.
Function and regulation of ULK1: from physiology to pathology.
Deubiquitinases in Cancers: Aspects of Proliferation, Metastasis, and Apoptosis.
Mitophagy: An Emergence of New Player in Alzheimer's Disease.

Nat Chem Biol. 2022 Aug;18(8): 802-811

A new dawn beyond lysine ubiquitination.

Daniel R Squair, Satpal Virdee.

The ubiquitin system has become synonymous with the modification of lysine residues. However, the substrate scope and diversity of the conjugation machinery have been underappreciated, bringing us to an epoch in ubiquitin system research. The striking discoveries of metazoan enzymes dedicated toward serine and threonine ubiquitination have revealed the important role of nonlysine ubiquitination in endoplasmic reticulum-associated degradation, immune signaling and neuronal processes, while reports of nonproteinaceous substrates have extended ubiquitination beyond the proteome. Bacterial effectors that bypass the canonical ubiquitination machinery and form unprecedented linkage chemistry further redefine long-standing dogma. While chemical biology approaches have advanced our understanding of the canonical ubiquitin system, further study of noncanonical ubiquitination has been hampered by a lack of suitable tools. This Perspective aims to consolidate and contextualize recent discoveries and to propose potential applications of chemical biology, which will be instrumental in unraveling this new frontier of ubiquitin research.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41589-022-01088-2
Front Cell Dev Biol. 2022 ;10 914288

The Ubiquitin-Proteasome System in Apoptosis and Apoptotic Cell Clearance.

Lei Yuan, Peiyao Li, Qian Zheng, Hui Wang, Hui Xiao.

  Ubiquitination, a critical post-translational modification of proteins, refers to the covalent attachment of ubiquitin to the substrate and is involved in various biological processes such as protein stability regulation, DNA damage repair, and apoptosis, among others. E3 ubiquitin ligases are essential enzymes of the ubiquitin pathway with high substrate specificity and precisely regulate specific proteins' turnover. As one of the most well-studied forms of programmed cell death, apoptosis is substantially conserved across the evolutionary tree. The final critical stage in apoptosis is the removal of apoptotic cells by professional and non-professional phagocytes. Apoptosis and apoptotic cell clearance are crucial for the normal development, differentiation, and growth of multicellular organisms, as well as their association with a variety of inflammatory and immune diseases. In this review, we discuss the role of ubiquitination and deubiquitination in apoptosis and apoptotic cell clearance.

Keywords:  E3 ligase; apoptosis; apoptotic cell clearance; deubiquination; ubiquitin

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3389/fcell.2022.914288
Autophagy. 2022 Jul 28.

Autophagic secretion of mitochondria (ASM): An alternative way for getting rid of damaged mitochondria.

Hayden Weng Siong Tan, Guang Lu, Han-Ming Shen.

  PINK1-PRKN/Parkin-mediated mitophagy represents an important mitochondrial quality control (MQC) pathway that clears damaged/dysfunctional mitochondria. Although the conjugation of mammalian Atg8-family proteins (mATG8s) to phosphatidylethanolamine (PE) is a defining step in autophagy, its role in mitophagy remains unclear. In our recent study, we found that the mATG8 conjugation system is not required for PINK1-PRKN-mediated mitochondria clearance. Instead, mATG8 conjugation system-independent mitochondria clearance relies on secretory autophagy, in a process we term as the autophagic secretion of mitochondria (ASM). As ASM results in the spurious activation of the CGAS-STING1 pathway, we propose that defects in mATG8 lipidation may promote inflammation through ASM.

Keywords:  Extracellular vesicles; PINK1-PRKN; inflammation; mATG8 conjugation system; mitochondrial quality control; mitophagy; secretory autophagy

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1080/15548627.2022.2107310
Autophagy. 2022 Jul 27. 1-2

TRIMming down autophagy in breast cancer.

Rick F Thorne, Yi Yang, Mian Wu, Song Chen.

  Macroautophagy/autophagy is a conserved lysosome-dependent metabolic recycling pathway. ULK1 plays an essential role in autophagy initiation through a complex formed with ATG13, RB1CC1/FIP200, and ATG101 in mammalian cells. However, while autophagy is triggered by nutrient starvation where it is essential for cell survival, such conditions lead to the rapid degradation of ULK1, indicating that autophagy must be tightly controlled. Nevertheless, the precise mechanisms regulating the ULK1 complex are still largely unknown. Here we reveal the critical roles played by two novel ULK1 complex binding proteins in autophagy regulation, TRIM27 and STK38L. We show that basal autophagy is maintained through TRIM27-mediated ubiquitination and proteasomal degradation of ULK1, whereas under starvation conditions, excessive autophagy is restrained by the combined actions of TRIM27 and STK38L. TRIM27 ubiquitinates and activates STK38L which in turn phosphorylates ULK1, delivering ULK1 in a permissive state for hyper-ubiquitination by TRIM27. Thus, TRIM27 and STK38L kinase act in concert as a rheostat to control ULK1 levels. We further demonstrate increased basal autophagy in trim27 knockout mice and establish physiological relevance in the context of breast cancer. Our study highlights the STK38L-TRIM27-ULK1 axis as a potential treatment avenue to explore for activating autophagy in various disease states.

Keywords:  Autophagy; STK38L; TRIM27; ULK1; breast cancer; metastasis; tumorigenesis; ubiquitination

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1080/15548627.2022.2105557
Front Cell Dev Biol. 2022 ;10 967720

Editorial: Cell Death and Targeted Cancer Therapies.

Tugba Bagci-Onder, Ozgur Kutuk, Triona Ni Chonghaile, Uwe Knippschild.



Keywords:  apoptosis; cancer; cell death; ferroptosis; pyroptosis; therapy resistance

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3389/fcell.2022.967720
Autophagy. 2022 Jul 24. 1-3

Conserved requirement of autophagy-related effectors during coronavirus replication.

Yannick Brüggemann, Annika Kratzel, Lea Almeida, Jenna N Kelly, Volker Thiel, Stephanie Pfaender.

  The recurrence of zoonotic transmission events highlights the need for novel treatment strategies against emerging coronaviruses (CoVs), namely SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV and most notably SARS-CoV-2. Our recently performed genome-wide CRISPR knockout screen revealed a list of conserved pan-coronavirus as well as MERS-CoV or HCoV-229E-specific host dependency factors (HDF) essential during the viral life cycle. Intriguingly, we identified the macroautophagy/autophagy pathway-regulating immunophilins FKBP8, TMEM41B, and MINAR1 as conserved MERS-CoV, HCoV-229E, SARS-CoV, and SARS-CoV-2 host factors, which further constitute potential targets for therapeutic intervention by clinically approved drugs.

Keywords:  Antiviral target; CRISPR screen; autophagy; coronavirus; host factor

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1080/15548627.2022.2100617
Gene. 2022 Jul 26. pii: S0378-1119(22)00591-1. [Epub ahead of print] 146772

Function and regulation of ULK1: from physiology to pathology.

Ze Rong, Kaifeng Zheng, Jun Chen, Xiaofeng Jin.

  The expression of ULK1, a core protein of autophagy, is closely related to autophagic activity. Numerous studies have shown that pathological abnormal expression of ULK1 is associated with various human diseases such as neurological disorders, infections, cardiovascular diseases, liver diseases and cancers. In addition, new advances in the regulation of ULK1 have been identified. Furthermore, targeting ULK1 as a therapeutic strategy for diseases is gaining attention as new corresponding activators or inhibitors are being developed. In this review, we describe the structure and regulation of ULK1 as well as the current targeted activators and inhibitors. Moreover, we highlight the pathological disorders of ULK1 expression and its critical role in human diseases.

Keywords:  Autophagy; Cancer; Cell and molecular biology; Kinase; Post-translational modification; ULK1

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gene.2022.146772
Cancers (Basel). 2022 Jul 21. pii: 3547. [Epub ahead of print]14(14):

Deubiquitinases in Cancers: Aspects of Proliferation, Metastasis, and Apoptosis.

Jiaqi Liu, Chi Tim Leung, Luyun Liang, Yuqin Wang, Jian Chen, Keng Po Lai, William Ka Fai Tse.

  Deubiquitinases (DUBs) deconjugate ubiquitin (UBQ) from ubiquitylated substrates to regulate its activity and stability. They are involved in several cellular functions. In addition to the general biological regulation of normal cells, studies have demonstrated their critical roles in various cancers. In this review, we evaluated and grouped the biological roles of DUBs, including proliferation, metastasis, and apoptosis, in the most common cancers in the world (liver, breast, prostate, colorectal, pancreatic, and lung cancers). The current findings in these cancers are summarized, and the relevant mechanisms and relationship between DUBs and cancers are discussed. In addition to highlighting the importance of DUBs in cancer biology, this study also provides updated information on the roles of DUBs in different types of cancers.

Keywords:  apoptosis; metastasis; proliferation

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3390/cancers14143547
Front Mol Neurosci. 2022 ;15 921908

Mitophagy: An Emergence of New Player in Alzheimer's Disease.

Bunty Sharma, Deeksha Pal, Ujjawal Sharma, Aman Kumar.

  Mitochondria provide neurons not only energy as ATP to keep them growing, proliferating and developing, but they also control apoptosis. Due to their high bioenergetic demand, neurons which are highly specific terminally differentiated cells, essentially depend on mitochondria. Defective mitochondrial function is thus related to numerous age-linked neurodegenerative ailments like Alzheimer's disease (AD), in which the build-up of impaired and malfunctioning mitochondria has been identified as a primary sign, paying to disease development. Mitophagy, selective autophagy, is a key mitochondrial quality control system that helps neurons to stay healthy and functional by removing undesired and damaged mitochondria. Dysfunctional mitochondria and dysregulated mitophagy have been closely associated with the onset of ADs. Various proteins associated with mitophagy were found to be altered in AD. Therapeutic strategies focusing on the restoration of mitophagy capabilities could be utilized to strike the development of AD pathogenesis. We summarize the mechanism and role of mitophagy in the onset and advancement of AD, in the quality control mechanism of mitochondria, the consequences of dysfunctional mitophagy in AD, and potential therapeutic approaches involving mitophagy modulation in AD. To develop new therapeutic methods, a better knowledge of the function of mitophagy in the pathophysiology of AD is required.

Keywords:  Alzheimer’s disease; mitochondrial dynamics; mitochondrial dysfunction; mitochondrial quality control; mitophagy; targeting mitophagy

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3389/fnmol.2022.921908