1. Chromosomes and Gene Expression
  2. Neuroscience

Activation of GCN2 kinase by ribosome stalling links translation elongation with translation initiation

  1. Ryuta Ishimura
  2. Gabor Nagy
  3. Ivan Dotu
  4. Jeffrey H Chuang
  5. Susan L Ackerman  Is a corresponding author
  1. Howard Hughes Medical Institute, The Jackson Laboratory for Mammalian Genetics, United States
  2. Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain
  3. The Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine, United States
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.14295
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Cite this article
  1. Ryuta Ishimura
  2. Gabor Nagy
  3. Ivan Dotu
  4. Jeffrey H Chuang
  5. Susan L Ackerman
(2016)
Activation of GCN2 kinase by ribosome stalling links translation elongation with translation initiation
eLife 5:e14295.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.14295
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Abstract

Ribosome stalling during translation has recently been shown to cause neurodegeneration, yet the signaling pathways triggered by stalled elongation complexes are unknown. To investigate these pathways we analyzed the brain of C57BL/6J-Gtpbp2nmf205-/- mice in which neuronal elongation complexes are stalled at AGA codons due to deficiencies in a tRNAArgUCU tRNA and GTPBP2, a mammalian ribosome rescue factor. Increased levels of phosphorylation of eIF2α (Ser51) were detected prior to neurodegeneration in these mice and transcriptome analysis demonstrated activation of ATF4, a key transcription factor in the integrated stress response (ISR) pathway. Genetic experiments showed that this pathway was activated by the eIF2α kinase, GCN2, in an apparent deacylated tRNA-independent fashion. Further we found that the ISR attenuates neurodegeneration in C57BL/6J-Gtpbp2nmf205-/- mice, underscoring the importance of cellular and stress context on the outcome of activation of this pathway. These results demonstrate the critical interplay between translation elongation and initiation in regulating neuron survival during cellular stress.

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Author details

  1. Ryuta Ishimura

    Howard Hughes Medical Institute, The Jackson Laboratory for Mammalian Genetics, Bar Harbor, United States
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.

  2. Gabor Nagy

    Howard Hughes Medical Institute, The Jackson Laboratory for Mammalian Genetics, Bar Harbor, United States
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.

  3. Ivan Dotu

    Research Programme on Biomedical Informatics, Department of Experimental and Health Sciences, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.

  4. Jeffrey H Chuang

    The Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine, Farmington, United States
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.

  5. Susan L Ackerman

    Howard Hughes Medical Institute, The Jackson Laboratory for Mammalian Genetics, Bar Harbor, United States
    For correspondence
    sackerman@ucsd.edu
    Competing interests
    Susan L Ackerman, Reviewing editor, eLife.

Ethics

Animal experimentation: This study was performed in strict accordance with the recommendations in the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals of the National Institutes of Health. All of the animals were handled according to approved institutional animal care and use protocol (TJL99055) at The Jackson Laboratory.

Copyright

© 2016, Ishimura et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

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  1. Ryuta Ishimura
  2. Gabor Nagy
  3. Ivan Dotu
  4. Jeffrey H Chuang
  5. Susan L Ackerman
(2016)
Activation of GCN2 kinase by ribosome stalling links translation elongation with translation initiation
eLife 5:e14295.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.14295

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.14295

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