Drosophila STING protein has a role in lipid metabolism

  1. Katarina Akhmetova
  2. Maxim Balasov
  3. Igor Chesnokov  Is a corresponding author
  1. University of Alabama at Birmingham, School of Medicine, United States

Abstract

Stimulator of interferon genes (STING) plays an important role in innate immunity by controlling type I interferon response against invaded pathogens. In this work we describe a previously unknown role of STING in lipid metabolism in Drosophila. Flies with STING deletion are sensitive to starvation and oxidative stress, have reduced lipid storage and downregulated expression of lipid metabolism genes. We found that Drosophila STING interacts with lipid synthesizing enzymes acetyl-CoA carboxylase (ACC) and fatty acid synthase (FASN). ACC and FASN also interact with each other, indicating that all three proteins may be components of a large multi-enzyme complex. The deletion of Drosophila STING leads to disturbed ACC localization and decreased FASN enzyme activity. Together, our results demonstrate a previously undescribed role of STING in lipid metabolism in Drosophila.

Data availability

All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files and tables.

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Katarina Akhmetova

    Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, University of Alabama at Birmingham, School of Medicine, Birmingham, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-2475-3288
  2. Maxim Balasov

    Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, University of Alabama at Birmingham, School of Medicine, Birmingham, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Igor Chesnokov

    Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, University of Alabama at Birmingham, School of Medicine, Birmingham, United States
    For correspondence
    ichesnokov@uab.edu
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-6659-2913

Funding

National Institute of General Medical Sciences (GM121449)

  • Katarina Akhmetova
  • Maxim Balasov
  • Igor Chesnokov

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Reviewing Editor

  1. Raghu Padinjat, National Centre for Biological Sciences, India

Version history

  1. Preprint posted: February 5, 2021 (view preprint)
  2. Received: February 8, 2021
  3. Accepted: August 31, 2021
  4. Accepted Manuscript published: September 1, 2021 (version 1)
  5. Accepted Manuscript updated: September 2, 2021 (version 2)
  6. Version of Record published: September 15, 2021 (version 3)

Copyright

© 2021, Akhmetova 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. Katarina Akhmetova
  2. Maxim Balasov
  3. Igor Chesnokov
(2021)
Drosophila STING protein has a role in lipid metabolism
eLife 10:e67358.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.67358

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