Autophagy-dependent rRNA degradation is essential for maintaining nucleotide homeostasis during C. elegans development
- Peking University, China
- National Institute of Biological Sciences, China
- Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
Abstract
Ribosome degradation through the autophagy-lysosome pathway is crucial for cell survival during nutrient starvation, but whether it occurs under normal growth conditions and contributes to animal physiology remains unaddressed. In this study, we identified RNST-2, a C. elegans T2 family endoribonuclease, as the key enzyme that degrades ribosomal RNA in lysosomes. We found that loss of rnst-2 causes accumulation of rRNA and ribosomal proteins in enlarged lysosomes and both phenotypes are suppressed by blocking autophagy, which indicates that RNST-2 mediates autophagic degradation of ribosomal RNA in lysosomes. rnst-2(lf) mutants are defective in embryonic and larval development and are short-lived. Remarkably, simultaneous loss of RNST-2 and de novo synthesis of pyrimidine nucleotides leads to complete embryonic lethality, which is suppressed by supplements of uridine or cytidine. Our study reveals an essential role of autophagy-dependent degradation of ribosomal RNA in maintaining nucleotide homeostasis during animal development.
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All data generated or analyses during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files.
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Funding
Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China
- Xiaochen Wang
National Science Foundation of China
- Xiaochen Wang
Chinese Academy of Sciences
- Xiaochen Wang
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2018, Liu 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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Autophagy-dependent rRNA degradation is essential for maintaining nucleotide homeostasis during C. elegans development
eLife 7:e36588.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.36588
