Inhibition of chaperone-mediated autophagy prevents glucotoxicity in the Caenorhabditis elegans mev-1 mutant by activation of the proteasome.

Chronic hyperglycemia is a hallmark of diabetes mellitus and the main cause of diabetes-associated complications. Increased intracellular glucose levels lead to damaged proteins and in consequence disturb cellular proteostasis. As an important contributor to the maintenance and restoration of proteostasis, autophagy mediates the lysosomal degradation of damaged proteins or entire cellular organelles. In the present study we used the stress-sensitive mev-1 mutant of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans in order to assess the role of lmp-2, a homologue of the lysosome associated membrane protein type 2A, in the context of glucotoxicity, which was achieved by feeding glucose in a liquid medium. Knockdown of lmp-2 by RNA interference completely prevented the survival reduction caused by glucose under heat stress. Those effects were associated with the prevention of (1) increased lysosome formation and (2) reduction of proteasomal activity, which were observed under glucose feeding. Finally, the survival reduction due to knockdown of ubiquitin remained unaffected by the additional lmp-2 knockdown in the absence or presence of glucose. In conclusion, our study provides evidence that lmp-2, a key player in chaperone-mediated autophagy, is functional in C. elegans, too. Inhibition of lmp-2 prevents the reduction of proteasomal activity by glucose and thereby prevents also glucotoxicity.

PEK-1 is crucial for hormesis induced by inhibition of the IRE-1/XBP-1 pathway in the Caenorhabditis elegans mev-1 mutant.

The accumulation of unfolded proteins in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) causes an imbalance of proteostasis and is related to many pathological conditions. In answer to this ER stress cells activate a network of three integrated signaling pathways consolidated as the unfolded protein response of the ER (UPR(ER)), which is also present in the stress-sensitive Caenorhabditis elegans mutant mev-1. Whereas inhibition of one of those pathways by RNA-interference (RNAi) versus xbp-1 results in reduced survival of mev-1 nematodes under heat stress, additional knockdown of the xbp-1 splicing activator ire-1 results in a PEK-1-dependent hormetic response. In contrast, increased survival under ire-1/xbp-1 double RNAi was found to be independent of the presence of HSP-4, an UPR(ER)-specific chaperone, as evidenced under ire-1/xbp-1/hsp-4 triple knockdown conditions. Moreover, ire-1/xbp-1 double-RNAi significantly increased chymotrypsin-like proteasomal activity, which was completely blocked under additional RNAi versus pek-1. In conclusion, we identified PEK-1 as a mediator of hormesis in the mev-1 mutant of C. elegans which is induced by simultaneous inhibition of XBP-1 and its splicing activator IRE-1 and mediated through activation of the proteasome.