p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) promotes cholesterol ester accumulation in macrophages through inhibition of macroautophagy

p38 MAPK has been strongly implicated in the development of atherosclerosis, but its role in cholesterol ester accumulation in macrophages and formation of foam cells, an early step in the development of atherosclerosis, has not been investigated. We addressed this issue and made some brand new observations. First, elevated intracellular cholesterol level induced by the exposure to LDL-activated p38 MAPK and activation of p38 MAPK with anisomycin increased the ratio of cholesterol esters over free cholesterol, whereas inhibition of p38 MAPK with SB203580 or siRNA reduced the LDL loading-induced intracellular accumulation of free cholesterol and cholesterol esters in macrophages. Second, exposure to LDL cholesterol inhibited autophagy in macrophages, and inhibition of autophagy with 3-methyladenine increased intracellular accumulation of cholesterol (free cholesterol and cholesterol esters), whereas activation of autophagy with rapamycin decreased intracellular accumulation of free cholesterol and cholesterol esters induced by the exposure to LDL cholesterol. Third, LDL cholesterol loading-induced inhibition of autophagy was prevented by blockade of p38 MAPK with SB203580 or siRNA. Neutral cholesterol ester hydrolase was co-localized with autophagosomes. Finally, LDL cholesterol loading and p38 activation suppressed expression of the key autophagy gene, ulk1, in macrophages. Together, our results provide brand new insight about cholesterol ester accumulation in macrophages and foam cell formation.     

细胞自噬的诱导及检测技术在细胞生物学实验教学中的应用实例

细胞自噬是一种在进化上高度保守的溶酶体吞噬降解自身成分的胞内代谢途径。它与多种生理功能有关,如在饥饿、刺激等不利环境条件下,细胞通过自噬降解多余或异常的大分子,为细胞的生存提供能量及原材料,促进生物体的生长发育、细胞分化及对环境变化产生应答。但是,过度的自噬可以导致细胞死亡,因此自噬又被称为II型程序性细胞死亡,这是除凋亡和坏死之外的一种新的细胞死亡方式。另外,自噬异常与多种病理过程如肿瘤、神经退行性病变、病原体感染等密切相关。由于细胞自噬在生理和病理过程中都发挥着重要作用,因此,自噬成为细胞生物学领域的一个新的研究热点。以细胞自噬为研究内容,设计了适合在本科生课程中开设的细胞自噬的诱导及观察实验项目,对该实验项目的实验原理、实验设计与安排等进行了详细的介绍,为该项目在实验课程中的推广提供了有益的参考。     

Glutathione participates in the modulation of starvation-induced autophagy in carcinoma cells

Glutathione (γ-L-glutamyl-L-cysteinyl-glycine, GSH) is the most abundant low molecular weight, thiol-containing compound within the cells and has a primary role in the antioxidant defense and intracellular signaling. Here we demonstrated that nutrient deprivation led to a significant decrease of intracellular GSH levels in three different carcinoma cell lines. This phenomenon was dependent on ABCC1-mediated GSH extrusion, along with GCL inhibition and, to a minor extent, the formation of GSH-protein mixed disulfides that synergistically contributed to the modulation of autophagy by shifting the intracellular redox state toward more oxidizing conditions. Modulation of intracellular GSH by inhibiting its de novo synthesis through incubation with buthionine sulfoximine, or by maintaining its levels through GSH ethyl ester, affected the oxidation of protein thiols, such as PRDXs and consequently the kinetics of autophagy activation. We also demonstrated that thiol-oxidizing or -alkylating agents, such as diamide and diethyl maleate activated autophagy, corroborating the evidence that changes in thiol redox state contributed to the occurrence of autophagy.     

Autophagosomes can support Yersinia pseudotuberculosis replication in macrophages

Yersinia pseudotuberculosis is able to replicate inside macrophages. However, the intracellular trafficking of the pathogen after its entry into the macrophage remains poorly understood. Using in vitro infected bone marrow‐derived macrophages, we show that Y. pseudotuberculosis activates the autophagy pathway. Host cell autophagosomes subverted by bacteria do not become acidified and sustain bacteria replication. Moreover, we report that autophagy inhibition correlated with bacterial trafficking inside an acidic compartment. This study indicates that Y. pseudotuberculosis hijacks the autophagy pathway for its replication and also opens up new opportunities for deciphering the molecular basis of the host cell signalling response to intracellular Yersinia infection.     

Autophagy: an emerging immunological paradigm

Autophagy is a fundamental eukaryotic process with multiple cytoplasmic homeostatic roles, recently expanded to include unique stand-alone immunological functions and interactions with nearly all parts of the immune system. In this article, we review this growing repertoire of autophagy roles in innate and adaptive immunity and inflammation. Its unique functions include cell-autonomous elimination of intracellular microbes facilitated by specific receptors. Other intersections of autophagy with immune processes encompass effects on inflammasome activation and secretion of its substrates, including IL-1β, effector and regulatory interactions with TLRs and Nod-like receptors, Ag presentation, naive T cell repertoire selection, and mature T cell development and homeostasis. Genome-wide association studies in human populations strongly implicate autophagy in chronic inflammatory disease and autoimmune disorders. Collectively, the unique features of autophagy as an immunological process and its contributions to other arms of the immune system represent a new immunological paradigm.     

Regulation and role of autophagy in mammalian cells

The recent period has witnessed progress in the understanding of the lysosomal autophagic pathway. The discovery of a family of genes conserved from yeast to humans, and involved in the formation of autophagosomes, has unraveled new protein-conjugation systems and has shed light on the importance of autophagy in physiology and pathophysiology. The elucidation of the molecular control of autophagy will also lead to a better understanding of the role of autophagy during cell death. As a great number of extracellular stimuli (starvation, hormonal or therapeutic treatment) as well as intracellular stimuli (accumulation of misfolded proteins, invasion of microorganisms) is able to modulate the autophagic response, it is not surprising that several signaling pathways are involved in the control of autophagy. The mammalian Target of Rapamycin (mTOR) signaling pathway plays a major role in transmitting autophagic stimuli because of its ability to sense nutrient, metabolic and hormonal signals. In addition, autophagy, which is characterized by a flux of membrane from the formation of the autophagosome to the fusion with the lysosome, is regulated by GTPases, similarly to the vesicular transport along the exocytic/endocytic pathway. The aim of the present review is to give an overview of autophagy and to discuss its regulation by activators and effectors of mTOR and GTPases.     

Role of autophagy in disease resistance and hypersensitive response-associated cell death

Ancient autophagy pathways are emerging as key defense modules in host eukaryotic cells against microbial pathogens. Apart from actively eliminating intracellular intruders, autophagy is also responsible for cell survival, for example by reducing the deleterious effects of endoplasmic reticulum stress. At the same time, autophagy can contribute to cellular suicide. The concurrent engagement of autophagy in these processes during infection may sometimes mask its contribution to differing pro-survival and pro-death decisions. The importance of autophagy in innate immunity in mammals is well documented, but how autophagy contributes to plant innate immunity and cell death is not that clear. A few research reports have appeared recently to shed light on the roles of autophagy in plant-pathogen interactions and in disease-associated host cell death. We present a first attempt to reconcile the results of this research.     

Eating oneself and uninvited guests: autophagy-related pathways in cellular defense

The eukaryotic cell uses an evolutionarily conserved lysosomal pathway of self-digestion (autophagy) for survival when extracellular nutrients are limited. In this issue of Cell, new evidence indicates that autophagy is used to for survival when intracellular nutrients are limited by growth factor deprivation (Lum et al., 2005). Other recent studies indicate that the autophagy machinery is also used to degrade foreign microbial invaders (xenophagy).     

Deconvoluting the role of reactive oxygen species and autophagy in human diseases

Reactive oxygen species (ROS), chemically reactive molecules containing oxygen, can form as a natural byproduct of the normal metabolism of oxygen and also have their crucial roles in cell homeostasis. Of note, the major intracellular sources including mitochondria, endoplasmic reticulum (ER), peroxisomes and the NADPH oxidase (NOX) complex have been identified in cell membranes to produce ROS. Interestingly, autophagy, an evolutionarily conserved lysosomal degradation process in which a cell degrades long-lived proteins and damaged organelles, has recently been well-characterized to be regulated by different types of ROS. Accumulating evidence has demonstrated that ROS-modulated autophagy has numerous links to a number of pathological processes, including cancer, ageing, neurodegenerative diseases, type-II diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, muscular disorders, hepatic encephalopathy and immunity diseases. In this review, we focus on summarizing the molecular mechanisms of ROS-regulated autophagy and their relevance to diverse diseases, which would shed new light on more ROS modulators as potential therapeutic drugs for fighting human diseases.     

自噬在HBV感染发病机制中的作用

自噬是一种新陈代谢过程,通过溶酶体降解受损蛋白质和细胞器来维持细胞内环境的稳态.乙型肝炎病毒(hepatitis B virus,HBV)能利用自噬功能增强其复制的能力,引起肝炎、肝硬化以及肝细胞癌(hepatocellular carcinoma,HCC).本文将从HBV相关蛋白、内质网应激、信号通路、细胞因子、微小...     

Autophagy and Heart Failure: A Possible Role for Homocysteine

Autophagy is a process used for intracellular digestion of organelles and proteins and has special relevance to the long-lived cardiomyocytes in heart disease. The pathway for autophagy and all its mediators remain to be elucidated, but involve such proteins as Atg, Beclin-1, LAMP-2, BH3, Bcl2, PI3K Kinase as well as a plethora of others. It is still not entirely clear whether autophagy is destructive or beneficial to the cell; evidence suggests that the answer is case-specific. For instance, autophagy appears to preserve cell life under cases of ischemia in I/R injury, but is detrimental during reperfusion. High levels of homocysteine (Hcy), a sulfur-containing amino acid, have been shown to be an independent risk factor for chronic heart failure. There are several links to induction and repression of autophagy and Hcy; the following connections to Hcy and autophagy have been made: intracellular nitrous oxide production, intracellular calcium production, and reactive oxygen species production. Further work remains to be elucidated concerning the specific mechanisms under which autophagy occurs and possible Hcy-mediated connections. Moreover, the therapeutic implications might be of some promise to patients.     

Autophagy controls Salmonella infection in response to damage to the Salmonella-containing vacuole

Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium (S. Typhimurium) is a facultative intracellular pathogen that causes disease in a variety of hosts. S. Typhimurium actively invade host cells and typically reside within a membrane-bound compartment called the Salmonella-containing vacuole (SCV). The bacteria modify the fate of the SCV using two independent type III secretion systems (TTSS). TTSS are known to damage eukaryotic cell membranes and S. Typhimurium has been suggested to damage the SCV using its Salmonella pathogenicity island (SPI)-1 encoded TTSS. Here we show that this damage gives rise to an intracellular bacterial population targeted by the autophagy system during in vitro infection. Approximately 20% of intracellular S. Typhimurium colocalized with the autophagy marker GFP-LC3 at 1 h postinfection. Autophagy of S. Typhimurium was dependent upon the SPI-1 TTSS and bacterial protein synthesis. Bacteria targeted by the autophagy system were often associated with ubiquitinated proteins, indicating their exposure to the cytosol. Surprisingly, these bacteria also colocalized with SCV markers. Autophagy-deficient (atg5-/-) cells were more permissive for intracellular growth by S. Typhimurium than normal cells, allowing increased bacterial growth in the cytosol. We propose a model in which the host autophagy system targets bacteria in SCVs damaged by the SPI-1 TTSS. This serves to retain intracellular S. Typhimurium within vacuoles early after infection to protect the cytosol from bacterial colonization. Our findings support a role for autophagy in innate immunity and demonstrate that Salmonella infection is a powerful model to study the autophagy process.     

Autophagy and its implication in human oral diseases

Macroautophagy/autophagy is a conserved lysosomal degradation process essential for cell physiology and human health. By regulating apoptosis, inflammation, pathogen clearance, immune response and other cellular processes, autophagy acts as a modulator of pathogenesis and is a potential therapeutic target in diverse diseases. With regard to oral disease, autophagy can be problematic either when it is activated or impaired, because this process is involved in diverse functions, depending on the specific disease and its level of progression. In particular, activated autophagy functions as a cytoprotective mechanism under environmental stress conditions, which regulates tumor growth and mediates resistance to anticancer treatment in established tumors. During infections and inflammation, activated autophagy selectively delivers microbial antigens to the immune systems, and is therefore connected to the elimination of intracellular pathogens. Impaired autophagy contributes to oxidative stress, genomic instability, chronic tissue damage, inflammation and tumorigenesis, and is involved in aberrant bacterial clearance and immune priming. Hence, substantial progress in the study of autophagy provides new insights into the pathogenesis of oral diseases. This review outlines the mechanisms of autophagy, and highlights the emerging roles of this process in oral cancer, periapical lesions, periodontal diseases, and oral candidiasis.     

Induction of the Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress and Autophagy in Human Lung Carcinoma A549 Cells by Anacardic Acid

Anacardic acid (AA, 2-hydroxy-6-pentadecylbenzoic acid), a constituent of the cashew-nut shell, has a variety of beneficial effects on the treatment of cancer and tumors. However, the fact that AA induces ER stress and autophagy in cancer cell is not known. We investigated the effect of AA on ER-stress and autophagy-induced cell death in cancer cells. Because of our interest in lung cancer, we used the non-small cell lung adenocarcinoma A549 cells treated with 3.0 μg/ml of AA for this research. In this research we found that AA induces intracellular Ca²⁺ mobilization and ER stress. AA induced the ER stress-inducing factors, especially IRE1α, and the hallmarks of UPR, Grp78/Bip and GADD153/CHOP. AA inhibited the expression of p-PERK and its downstream substrate, p-elF2α. We also demonstrated that AA induces autophagy. Up-regulation of autophagy-related genes and the appearance of autophagosome in transfected cells with green fluorescent protein (GFP)-LC3 and GFP-Beclin1 plasmids showed the induction of autophagy in AA-treated A549 cells. The morphological analysis of intracellular organelles by TEM also showed the evidence that AA induces ER stress and autophagy. For the first time, our research showed that AA induces ER stress and autophagy in cancer cells.     

Use of Shigella flexneri to Study Autophagy-Cytoskeleton Interactions

Shigella flexneri is an intracellular pathogen that can escape from phagosomes to reach the cytosol, and polymerize the host actin cytoskeleton to promote its motility and dissemination. New work has shown that proteins involved in actin-based motility are also linked to autophagy, an intracellular degradation process crucial for cell autonomous immunity. Strikingly, host cells may prevent actin-based motility of S. flexneri by compartmentalizing bacteria inside ‘septin cages’ and targeting them to autophagy. These observations indicate that a more complete understanding of septins, a family of filamentous GTP-binding proteins, will provide new insights into the process of autophagy. This report describes protocols to monitor autophagy-cytoskeleton interactions caused by S. flexneri in vitro using tissue culture cells and in vivo using zebrafish larvae. These protocols enable investigation of intracellular mechanisms that control bacterial dissemination at the molecular, cellular, and whole organism level.     

Suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid (SAHA) causes tumor growth slowdown and triggers autophagy in glioblastoma stem cells

Although suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid (SAHA), a histone deacetylase inhibitor, has been used in clinical trials for cancer therapies, its pharmacological effects occur through a poorly understood mechanism. Here, we report that SAHA specifically triggers autophagy and reduces cell viability via promotion of apoptosis in the late phase of glioblastoma stem cells (GSCs). Using a cell line cultured from a glioblastoma biopsy, we investigated the properties and effects of GSCs under SAHA treatment in vitro. In vivo xenograft assays revealed that SAHA effectively caused tumor growth slowdown and the induction of autophagy. SAHA was sufficient to increase formation of intracellular acidic vesicle organelles, recruitment of LC3-II to the autophagosomes, potentiation of BECN1 protein levels and reduced SQSTM1 levels. We determined that SAHA triggered autophagy through the downregulation of AKT-MTOR signaling, a major suppressive cascade of autophagy. Interestingly, upon depletion or pharmacological inhibition of autophagy, SAHA facilitates apoptosis and results in cell death at the early phase, suggesting that SAHA-induced autophagy functions probably act as a prosurvival mechanism. Furthermore, our results also indicated that the inhibition of SAHA-induced autophagy using chloroquine has synergistic effects that further increase apoptosis. Moreover, we found that a reduced dose of SAHA functioned as a potent modulator of differentiation and senescence. Taken together, our results provide a new perspective on the treatment of GSCs, indicating that SAHA is a promising agent for targeting GSCs through the induction of autophagy.     

细胞自噬与肿瘤耐药

细胞自噬是一种细胞自我降解的过程,在适应代谢应激、保持基因组完整性及维持内环境稳定方面发挥重要作用. 在肿瘤治疗中,凋亡耐受是产生肿瘤耐药的重要机制. 细胞自噬可防止抗肿瘤药诱导的凋亡,促进肿瘤耐药. 然而,自噬性细胞死亡可能是凋亡耐受肿瘤细胞的一种死亡方式. 因此,细胞自噬对肿瘤细胞的耐药性有双重影响. 本文综述了细胞自噬的分子机制、细胞自噬与凋亡的关系、细胞自噬与肿瘤耐药以及治疗的主要研究进展.     

Programmed cell death pathways in cancer: a review of apoptosis,autophagy and programmed necrosis

Programmed cell death (PCD), referring to apoptosis, autophagy and programmed necrosis, is proposed to be death of a cell in any pathological format, when mediated by an intracellular program. These three forms of PCD may jointly decide the fate of cells of malignant neoplasms; apoptosis and programmed necrosis invariably contribute to cell death, whereas autophagy can play either pro‐survival or pro‐death roles. Recent bulk of accumulating evidence has contributed to a wealth of knowledge facilitating better understanding of cancer initiation and progression with the three distinctive types of cell death. To be able to decipher PCD signalling pathways may aid development of new targeted anti‐cancer therapeutic strategies. Thus in this review, we present a brief outline of apoptosis, autophagy and programmed necrosis pathways and apoptosis‐related microRNA regulation, in cancer. Taken together, understanding PCD and the complex interplay between apoptosis, autophagy and programmed necrosis may ultimately allow scientists and clinicians to harness the three types of PCD for discovery of further novel drug targets, in the future cancer treatment.     

Role and regulation of autophagy in cancer

Autophagy is an intracellular self-degradative mechanism which responds to cellular conditions like stress or starvation and plays a key role in regulating cell metabolism, energy homeostasis, starvation adaptation, development and cell death. Numerous studies have stipulated the participation of autophagy in cancer, but the role of autophagy either as tumor suppressor or tumor promoter is not clearly understood. However, mechanisms by which autophagy promotes cancer involves a diverse range of modifications of autophagy associated proteins such as ATGs, Beclin-1, mTOR, p53, KRAS etc. and autophagy pathways like mTOR, PI3K, MAPK, EGFR, HIF and NFκB. Furthermore, several researches have highlighted a context-dependent, cell type and stage-dependent regulation of autophagy in cancer. Alongside this, the interaction between tumor cells and their microenvironment including hypoxia has a great potential in modulating autophagy response in favour to substantiate cancer cell metabolism, self-proliferation and metastasis. In this review article, we highlight the mechanism of autophagy and their contribution to cancer cell proliferation and development. In addition, we discuss about tumor microenvironment interaction and their consequence on selective autophagy pathways and the involvement of autophagy in various tumor types and their therapeutic interventions concentrated on exploiting autophagy as a potential target to improve cancer therapy.