ESCRTs function directly on the lysosome membrane to downregulate ubiquitinated lysosomal membrane proteins
Abstract
The lysosome plays an important role in maintaining cellular nutrient homeostasis. Regulation of nutrient storage can occur by the ubiquitination of certain transporters that are then sorted into the lysosome lumen for degradation. To better understand the underlying mechanism of this process, we performed genetic screens to identify components of the sorting machinery required for vacuole membrane protein degradation. These screens uncovered genes that encode a ubiquitin ligase complex, components of the PtdIns 3-kinase complex, and the ESCRT machinery. We developed a novel ubiquitination system, Rapamycin Induced Degradation (RapiDeg), to test the sorting defects caused by these mutants. These tests revealed that ubiquitinated vacuole membrane proteins recruit ESCRTs to the vacuole surface, where they mediate cargo sorting and direct cargo delivery into the vacuole lumen. Our findings demonstrate that the ESCRTs can function at both the late endosome and the vacuole membrane to mediate cargo sorting and intra-luminal vesicle formation.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Cornell University (Scott Emr research grant CU3704)
- Scott D Emr
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Randy Schekman, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California, Berkeley, United States
Version history
- Received: February 27, 2017
- Accepted: June 23, 2017
- Accepted Manuscript published: June 29, 2017 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: July 12, 2017 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2017, Zhu 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.
Metrics
-
- 6,072
- views
-
- 1,193
- downloads
-
- 74
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Further reading
-
- Cancer Biology
- Cell Biology
Establishing a zebrafish model of a deadly type of brain tumor highlights the role of the immune system in the early stages of the disease.
-
- Cell Biology
- Neuroscience
One of the most extensively studied members of the Ras superfamily of small GTPases, Rac1 is an intracellular signal transducer that remodels actin and phosphorylation signaling networks. Previous studies have shown that Rac1-mediated signaling is associated with hippocampal-dependent working memory and longer-term forms of learning and memory and that Rac1 can modulate forms of both pre- and postsynaptic plasticity. How these different cognitive functions and forms of plasticity mediated by Rac1 are linked, however, is unclear. Here, we show that spatial working memory in mice is selectively impaired following the expression of a genetically encoded Rac1 inhibitor at presynaptic terminals, while longer-term cognitive processes are affected by Rac1 inhibition at postsynaptic sites. To investigate the regulatory mechanisms of this presynaptic process, we leveraged new advances in mass spectrometry to identify the proteomic and post-translational landscape of presynaptic Rac1 signaling. We identified serine/threonine kinases and phosphorylated cytoskeletal signaling and synaptic vesicle proteins enriched with active Rac1. The phosphorylated sites in these proteins are at positions likely to have regulatory effects on synaptic vesicles. Consistent with this, we also report changes in the distribution and morphology of synaptic vesicles and in postsynaptic ultrastructure following presynaptic Rac1 inhibition. Overall, this study reveals a previously unrecognized presynaptic role of Rac1 signaling in cognitive processes and provides insights into its potential regulatory mechanisms.