Hypoxia-induced mitochondrial stress granules

Perturbations of mitochondrial proteostasis have been associated with aging, neurodegenerative diseases, and recently with hypoxic injury. While examining hypoxia-induced mitochondrial protein aggregation in C. elegans, we found that sublethal hypoxia, sodium azide, or heat shock-induced abundant ethidium bromide staining mitochondrial granules that preceded evidence of protein aggregation. Genetic manipulations that reduce cellular and organismal hypoxic death block the formation of these mitochondrial stress granules (mitoSG). Knockdown of mitochondrial nucleoid proteins also blocked the formation of mitoSG by a mechanism distinct from the mitochondrial unfolded protein response. Lack of the major mitochondrial matrix protease LONP-1 resulted in the constitutive formation of mitoSG without external stress. Ethidium bromide-staining RNA-containing mitochondrial granules were also observed in rat cardiomyocytes treated with sodium azide, a hypoxia mimetic. Mitochondrial stress granules are an early mitochondrial pathology controlled by LONP and the nucleoid, preceding hypoxia-induced protein aggregation.

Effect of the mitochondrial unfolded protein response on hypoxic death and mitochondrial protein aggregation

Mitochondria are the main oxygen consumers in cells and as such are the primary organelle affected by hypoxia. All hypoxia pathology presumably derives from the initial mitochondrial dysfunction. An early event in hypoxic pathology in C. elegans is disruption of mitochondrial proteostasis with induction of the mitochondrial unfolded protein response (UPR^mt) and mitochondrial protein aggregation. Here in C. elegans, we screen through RNAis and mutants that confer either strong resistance to hypoxic cell death or strong induction of the UPR^mt to determine the relationship between hypoxic cell death, UPR^mt activation, and hypoxia-induced mitochondrial protein aggregation (HIMPA). We find that resistance to hypoxic cell death invariantly mitigated HIMPA. We also find that UPR^mt activation invariantly mitigated HIMPA. However, UPR^mt activation was neither necessary nor sufficient for resistance to hypoxic death and vice versa. We conclude that UPR^mt is not necessarily hypoxia protective against cell death but does protect from mitochondrial protein aggregation, one of the early hypoxic pathologies in C. elegans.

Coordinate Regulation of Ribosome and tRNA Biogenesis Controls Hypoxic Injury and Translation

The translation machinery is composed of a myriad of proteins and RNAs whose levels must be coordinated to efficiently produce proteins without wasting energy or substrate. However, protein synthesis is clearly not always perfectly tuned to its environment, as disruption of translation machinery components can lengthen lifespan and stress survival. While much has been learned from bacteria and yeast about translational regulation, much less is known in metazoans. In a screen for mutations protecting C. elegans from hypoxic stress, we isolated multiple genes impacting protein synthesis: a ribosomal RNA helicase gene, tRNA biosynthesis genes, and a gene controlling amino acid availability. To define better the mechanisms by which these genes impact protein synthesis, we performed a second screen for suppressors of the conditional developmental arrest phenotype of the RNA helicase mutant and identified genes involved in ribosome biogenesis. Surprisingly, these suppressor mutations restored normal hypoxic sensitivity and protein synthesis to the tRNA biogenesis mutants, but not to the mutant reducing amino acid uptake. Proteomic analysis demonstrated that reduced tRNA biosynthetic activity produces a selective homeostatic reduction in ribosomal subunits, thereby offering a mechanism for the suppression results. Our study uncovers an unrecognized higher-order-translation regulatory mechanism in a metazoan whereby ribosome biogenesis genes communicate with genes controlling tRNA abundance matching the global rate of protein synthesis with available resources.

Reactivation of RNA metabolism underlies somatic restoration after adult reproductive diapause in C. elegans

The mechanisms underlying biological aging are becoming recognized as therapeutic targets to delay the onset of multiple age-related morbidities. Even greater health benefits can potentially be achieved by halting or reversing age-associated changes. C. elegans restore their tissues and normal longevity upon exit from prolonged adult reproductive diapause, but the mechanisms underlying this phenomenon remain unknown. Here, we focused on the mechanisms controlling recovery from adult diapause. Here, we show that functional improvement of post-mitotic somatic tissues does not require germline signaling, germline stem cells, or replication of nuclear or mitochondrial DNA. Instead a large expansion of the somatic RNA pool is necessary for restoration of youthful function and longevity. Treating animals with the drug 5-fluoro-2'-deoxyuridine prevents this restoration by blocking reactivation of RNA metabolism. These observations define a critical early step during exit from adult reproductive diapause that is required for somatic rejuvenation of an adult metazoan animal.

Functional modularity of nuclear hormone receptors in a Caenorhabditis elegans metabolic gene regulatory network

We present the first gene regulatory network (GRN) that pertains to post-developmental gene expression. Specifically, we mapped a transcription regulatory network of Caenorhabditis elegans metabolic gene promoters using gene-centered yeast one-hybrid assays. We found that the metabolic GRN is enriched for nuclear hormone receptors (NHRs) compared with other gene-centered regulatory networks, and that these NHRs organize into functional network modules.

The NHR family has greatly expanded in nematodes; C. elegans has 284 NHRs, whereas humans have only 48. We show that the NHRs in the metabolic GRN have metabolic phenotypes, suggesting that they do not simply function redundantly.

The mediator subunit MDT-15 preferentially interacts with NHRs that occur in the metabolic GRN.

We describe an NHR circuit that responds to nutrient availability and propose a model for the evolution and organization of NHRs in C. elegans metabolic regulatory networks.

Physical and/or regulatory interactions between transcription factors (TFs) and their target genes are essential to establish body plans of multicellular organisms during development, and these interactions have been studied extensively in the context of GRNs. The precise control of differential gene expression is also of critical importance to maintain physiological homeostasis, and many metabolic disorders such as obesity and diabetes coincide with substantial changes in gene expression. Much work has focused on the GRNs that control metazoan development; however, the design principles and organization of the GRNs that control systems physiology remain largely unexplored.

In this study, we present the first gene-centered GRN that includes ∼70 genes involved in C. elegans metabolism and physiology, 100 TFs and more than 500 protein–DNA interactions between them. The resulting metabolic GRN is enriched for NHRs, compared with other gene-centered regulatory networks. NHRs are well-known regulators of lipid meta-qj;bolism in mammals. The transcriptional activity of NHRs can be modified by diffusible ligands, which allows these TFs to function as molecular sensors and rapidly alter the expression of their target genes. Interestingly, NHRs comprise the largest family of TFs in nematodes; the C. elegans genome encodes 284 NHRs, most of which are uncharacterized. Furthermore, their organization in GRNs has not yet been investigated. In our study, we show that the C. elegans NHRs that we retrieved in the metabolic GRN organize into network modules, and that most of these NHRs function to maintain lipid homeostasis in the nematode. Interestingly, network modularity has been proposed to facilitate rapid and robust changes in gene expression. Our results suggest that the C. elegans metabolic GRN may have evolved by combining NHR family expansion with the specific modular wiring of NHRs to enable the rapid adaptation of the animal to different environmental cues.

NHRs can interact with transcriptional cofactors such as chromatin remodeling complexes and Mediator components. For instance, the C. elegans Mediator subunit, MDT-15, can interact with NHR-49 to regulate the expression of its target genes. To find all the TFs that MDT-15 can interact with, we performed systematic yeast two-hybrid assays with MDT-15 versus 755 full-length TFs. We found that MDT-15 preferentially associates with NHRs, and specifically with those NHRs that confer a metabolic phenotype and that occur in the metabolic GRN. This illustrates the central role of MDT-15 in the regulation of metabolic gene expression.

Using a variety of genetic and biochemical approaches, we characterized NHR-86 in more detail. NHR-86 participates in one of the two NHR modules, and has a high-flux capacity; that is it has both a high incoming and a high outgoing degree. We obtained an nhr-86 mutant and generated an NHR-86 antibody, and showed that NHR-86 functions as an auto-repressor in vivo and that nhr-86 mutant animals store abnormally high levels of body fat.

Finally, we discovered a novel NHR circuit that responds to nutrient availability. In this circuit NHR-45 regulates the activity of nhr-178 promoter in two distinct physiologically important tissues: the intestine and the hypodermis. Both of these NHRs are required to maintain lipid homeostasis in C. elegans. The expression of nhr-178 is responsive to the nutritional status of the animal, which switches between ON and OFF states in the hypodermis. We found that NHR-45 activity is necessary to control this switch in the hypodermis. Interestingly, NHR-45 has opposite effects on the activity of the nhr-178 promoter in these tissues: NHR-45 activates this promoter in the intestine, but represses it in the hypodermis.

Altogether our study leads to a model in which the expansion of the NHR family, TFs that have the capacity to act as fast molecular sensors, is combined with a modular network organization to enable rapid and robust responses to various environmental cues.

Gene regulatory networks (GRNs) provide insights into the mechanisms of differential gene expression at a systems level. GRNs that relate to metazoan development have been studied extensively. However, little is still known about the design principles, organization and functionality of GRNs that control physiological processes such as metabolism, homeostasis and responses to environmental cues. In this study, we report the first experimentally mapped metazoan GRN of Caenorhabditis elegans metabolic genes. This network is enriched for nuclear hormone receptors (NHRs). The NHR family has greatly expanded in nematodes: humans have 48 NHRs, but C. elegans has 284, most of which are uncharacterized. We find that the C. elegans metabolic GRN is highly modular and that two GRN modules predominantly consist of NHRs. Network modularity has been proposed to facilitate a rapid response to different cues. As NHRs are metabolic sensors that are poised to respond to ligands, this suggests that C. elegans GRNs evolved to enable rapid and adaptive responses to different cues by a concurrence of NHR family expansion and modular GRN wiring.

Diversity and function of orphan nuclear receptors in nematodes

Nuclear receptors (NRs) have key regulatory functions in a wide range of biological processes and are one of the most abundant classes of transcriptional regulators in metazoans. NRs are particularly numerous in nematodes, in which the NR gene family has undergone extensive expansion and diversification, providing an evolutionary structure function experiment that is yielding new perspectives on the mechanisms of NR function and on nematode biology. The genome sequence of the free-living nematode Caenorhabditis elegans reveals 270 predicted NR genes, more than fivefold more than observed for any other species to date, though existing data suggest that NR genes are similarly abundant in other nematodes. Most of the currently available information regarding the functions of nematode NRs comes from ongoing studies with C. elegans, and we review here what has been learned thus far in three key areas: the relationships of C. elegans NRs to those in other species; the biochemical consequences of nematode NR sequence diversity.