AGS3 antagonizes LGN to balance oriented cell divisions and cell fate choices in mammalian epidermis

  1. Carlos P Descovich
  2. Kendall J Lough
  3. Akankshya Jena
  4. Jessica J Wu
  5. Jina Yom
  6. Danielle C Spitzer
  7. Manuela Uppalapati
  8. Katarzyna M Kedziora
  9. Scott E Williams  Is a corresponding author
  1. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, United States
  2. University of California, Berkeley, United States

Abstract

Oriented cell divisions balance self-renewal and differentiation in stratified epithelia such as the skin epidermis. During peak epidermal stratification, the distribution of division angles among basal keratinocyte progenitors is bimodal, with planar and perpendicular divisions driving symmetric and asymmetric daughter cell fates, respectively. An apically-restricted, evolutionarily-conserved spindle orientation complex that includes the scaffolding protein LGN/Pins/Gpsm2 plays a central role in promoting perpendicular divisions and stratification, but why only a subset of cell polarize LGN is not known. Here, we demonstrate that the LGN paralog, AGS3/Gpsm1, is a novel negative regulator of LGN, and inhibits perpendicular divisions. Static and ex vivo live imaging reveal that AGS3 overexpression displaces LGN from the apical cortex and increases planar orientations, while AGS3 loss prolongs cortical LGN localization and leads to a perpendicular orientation bias. Genetic epistasis experiments in double mutants confirm that AGS3 operates through LGN. Finally, clonal lineage tracing shows that LGN and AGS3 promote asymmetric and symmetric fates, respectively, while also influencing differentiation through delamination. Collectively, these studies shed new light into how spindle orientation influences epidermal stratification.

Data availability

All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting file; Source Data files have been provided for data in all figures.

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Carlos P Descovich

    Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-6366-5195
  2. Kendall J Lough

    Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Akankshya Jena

    Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Jessica J Wu

    Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  5. Jina Yom

    Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  6. Danielle C Spitzer

    Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-4827-1857
  7. Manuela Uppalapati

    Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  8. Katarzyna M Kedziora

    Bioinformatics and Analytics Research Collaborative, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  9. Scott E Williams

    Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, United States
    For correspondence
    scott_williams@med.unc.edu
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-9975-7334

Funding

National Institutes of Health (R01 AR077591)

  • Scott E Williams

United States - Israel Binational Science Foundation (2019230)

  • Scott E Williams

Sidney Kimmel Foundation (SKF-15-065)

  • Scott E Williams

Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (2020- 225716)

  • Katarzyna M Kedziora

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

Reviewing Editor

  1. Yukiko M Yamashita, Whitehead Institute/MIT, United States

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 committee (IACUC) protocols 19-155 and 22-121 at the University of North Carolina. All mice were housed in an AAALAC-accredited (#329; November, 2020), USDA registered (55-R-0004), NIH welfare-assured (D16-00256 (A3410-01) animal facility. All surgeries were performed under isoflurane anesthesia and meloxicam was alleviated post-operatively to minimize pain.

Version history

  1. Received: May 19, 2022
  2. Preprint posted: May 20, 2022 (view preprint)
  3. Accepted: April 4, 2023
  4. Accepted Manuscript published: April 5, 2023 (version 1)
  5. Version of Record published: April 19, 2023 (version 2)

Copyright

© 2023, Descovich 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

  • 804
    views
  • 143
    downloads
  • 2
    citations

Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.

Download links

A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.

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)

  1. Carlos P Descovich
  2. Kendall J Lough
  3. Akankshya Jena
  4. Jessica J Wu
  5. Jina Yom
  6. Danielle C Spitzer
  7. Manuela Uppalapati
  8. Katarzyna M Kedziora
  9. Scott E Williams
(2023)
AGS3 antagonizes LGN to balance oriented cell divisions and cell fate choices in mammalian epidermis
eLife 12:e80403.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.80403

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.80403

Further reading

    1. Cell Biology
    2. Neuroscience
    Toshiharu Ichinose, Shu Kondo ... Hiromu Tanimoto
    Research Article

    Multicellular organisms are composed of specialized cell types with distinct proteomes. While recent advances in single-cell transcriptome analyses have revealed differential expression of mRNAs, cellular diversity in translational profiles remains underinvestigated. By performing RNA-seq and Ribo-seq in genetically defined cells in the Drosophila brain, we here revealed substantial post-transcriptional regulations that augment the cell-type distinctions at the level of protein expression. Specifically, we found that translational efficiency of proteins fundamental to neuronal functions, such as ion channels and neurotransmitter receptors, was maintained low in glia, leading to their preferential translation in neurons. Notably, distribution of ribosome footprints on these mRNAs exhibited a remarkable bias toward the 5′ leaders in glia. Using transgenic reporter strains, we provide evidence that the small upstream open-reading frames in the 5’ leader confer selective translational suppression in glia. Overall, these findings underscore the profound impact of translational regulation in shaping the proteomics for cell-type distinction and provide new insights into the molecular mechanisms driving cell-type diversity.

    1. Cancer Biology
    2. Cell Biology
    Camille Dantzer, Justine Vaché ... Violaine Moreau
    Research Article

    Immune checkpoint inhibitors have produced encouraging results in cancer patients. However, the majority of ß-catenin-mutated tumors have been described as lacking immune infiltrates and resistant to immunotherapy. The mechanisms by which oncogenic ß-catenin affects immune surveillance remain unclear. Herein, we highlighted the involvement of ß-catenin in the regulation of the exosomal pathway and, by extension, in immune/cancer cell communication in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). We showed that mutated ß-catenin represses expression of SDC4 and RAB27A, two main actors in exosome biogenesis, in both liver cancer cell lines and HCC patient samples. Using nanoparticle tracking analysis and live-cell imaging, we further demonstrated that activated ß-catenin represses exosome release. Then, we demonstrated in 3D spheroid models that activation of β-catenin promotes a decrease in immune cell infiltration through a defect in exosome secretion. Taken together, our results provide the first evidence that oncogenic ß-catenin plays a key role in exosome biogenesis. Our study gives new insight into the impact of ß-catenin mutations on tumor microenvironment remodeling, which could lead to the development of new strategies to enhance immunotherapeutic response.