Cholesterol depletion induces autophagy.
Autophagy is a mechanism to digest cells' own components, and its importance in many physiological and pathological processes is being recognized. But the molecular mechanism that regulates autophagy is not understood in detail. In the present study, we found that cholesterol depletion induces macroautophagy. The cellular cholesterol in human fibroblasts was depleted either acutely using 5mM methyl-beta-cyclodextrin or 10-20mug/ml nystatin for 1h, or metabolically by 20muM mevastatin and 200muM mevalonolactone along with 10% lipoprotein-deficient serum for 2-3 days. By any of these protocols, marked increase of LC3-II was detected by immunoblotting and by immunofluorescence microscopy, and the increase was more extensive than that caused by amino acid starvation, i.e., incubation in Hanks' solution for several hours. The induction of autophagic vacuoles by cholesterol depletion was also observed in other cell types, and the LC3-positive membranes were often seen as long tubules, >50mum in length. The increase of LC3-II by methyl-beta-cyclodextrin was suppressed by phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase inhibitors and was accompanied by dephosphorylation of mammalian target of rapamycin. By electron microscopy, autophagic vacuoles induced by cholesterol depletion were indistinguishable from those seen after amino acid starvation. These results demonstrate that a decrease in cholesterol activates autophagy by a phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase-dependent mechanism.[1]References
- Cholesterol depletion induces autophagy. Cheng, J., Ohsaki, Y., Tauchi-Sato, K., Fujita, A., Fujimoto, T. Biochem. Biophys. Res. Commun. (2006) [Pubmed]
Annotations and hyperlinks in this abstract are from individual authors of WikiGenes or automatically generated by the WikiGenes Data Mining Engine. The abstract is from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.About WikiGenesOpen Access LicencePrivacy PolicyTerms of Useapsburg
