LRG1 is an adipokine that promotes insulin sensitivity and suppresses inflammation
Abstract
While dysregulation of adipocyte endocrine function plays a central role in obesity and its complications, the vast majority of adipokines remain uncharacterized. We employed bio-orthogonal non-canonical amino acid tagging (BONCAT) and mass spectrometry to comprehensively characterize the secretome of murine visceral and subcutaneous white and interscapular brown adipocytes. Over 600 proteins were identified, the majority of which showed cell type-specific enrichment. We here describe a metabolic role for leucine-rich α-2 glycoprotein 1 (LRG1) as an obesity-regulated adipokine secreted by mature adipocytes. LRG1 overexpression significantly improved glucose homeostasis in diet-induced and genetically obese mice. This was associated with markedly reduced white adipose tissue macrophage accumulation and systemic inflammation. Mechanistically, we found LRG1 binds cytochrome c in circulation to dampen its pro-inflammatory effect. These data support a new role for LRG1 as an insulin sensitizer with therapeutic potential given its immunomodulatory function at the nexus of obesity, inflammation, and associated pathology.
Data availability
Proteomic dataset has been deposited to Proteomexchange PRIDE under accession PXD035318. RNA-Seq data have been deposited to GEO under accession GSE208219. All original gels and blots are available as Source Data Files.
-
AAV-mediated LRG1 overexpression in diabetic miceNCBI Gene Expression Omnibus, GSE208219.
-
RNA-seq from ENCODE/LICRNCBI Gene Expression Omnibus, GSE36026.
-
tissue-specific pattern of mRNA expressionNCBI Gene Expression Omnibus, GSE1133.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
American Diabetes Association (1-17-ACE-17)
- Paul Cohen
National Institutes of Health (RC2 DK129961)
- Paul Cohen
National Institute of General Medical Sciences (T32GM007739)
- Chan Hee J Choi
- Sarah K Szwed
Sarnoff Cardiovascular Research Foundation
- Samir Zaman
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: All animal studies were performed in accordance with the institutional guidelines of the Rockefeller University Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) protocol (18016-H). Experiments involving adenoviral and AAV8 vectors were performed under general anesthesia using isoflurane, in accordance with the institutional ABSL-2 guidelines.
Copyright
© 2022, Choi 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
-
- 2,406
- views
-
- 496
- downloads
-
- 12
- 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
-
- Cell Biology
Degrons are minimal protein features that are sufficient to target proteins for degradation. In most cases, degrons allow recognition by components of the cytosolic ubiquitin proteasome system. Currently, all of the identified degrons only function within the cytosol. Using Saccharomyces cerevisiae, we identified the first short linear sequences that function as degrons from the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) lumen. We show that when these degrons are transferred to proteins, they facilitate proteasomal degradation through the endoplasmic reticulum associated degradation (ERAD) system. These degrons enable degradation of both luminal and integral membrane ER proteins, expanding the types of proteins that can be targeted for degradation in budding yeast and mammalian tissue culture. This discovery provides a framework to target proteins for degradation from the previously unreachable ER lumen and builds toward therapeutic approaches that exploit the highly conserved ERAD system.
-
- Cell Biology
Classical G-protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) signaling takes place in response to extracellular stimuli and involves receptors and heterotrimeric G proteins located at the plasma membrane. It has recently been established that GPCR signaling can also take place from intracellular membrane compartments, including endosomes that contain internalized receptors and ligands. While the mechanisms of GPCR endocytosis are well understood, it is not clear how well internalized receptors are supplied with G proteins. To address this gap, we use gene editing, confocal microscopy, and bioluminescence resonance energy transfer to study the distribution and trafficking of endogenous G proteins. We show here that constitutive endocytosis is sufficient to supply newly internalized endocytic vesicles with 20–30% of the G protein density found at the plasma membrane. We find that G proteins are present on early, late, and recycling endosomes, are abundant on lysosomes, but are virtually undetectable on the endoplasmic reticulum, mitochondria, and the medial-trans Golgi apparatus. Receptor activation does not change heterotrimer abundance on endosomes. Our findings provide a subcellular map of endogenous G protein distribution, suggest that G proteins may be partially excluded from nascent endocytic vesicles, and are likely to have implications for GPCR signaling from endosomes and other intracellular compartments.