Atg8ylation as a general membrane stress and remodeling response

Authors:

Suresh Kumar1,2, Jingyue Jia1,2 and Vojo Deretic1,2

Affiliations:

1 Autophagy Inflammation and Metabolism Center of Biomedical Research Excellence, University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA.

2 Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA.

Keywords: 

ubiquitylation, endosome, exosomes, microvesicles, secretory autophagy, unconventional secretion, secretion, ubiquitin, galectin, lap, lc3, atg8, tfeb, lysosome, ampk, mtor, autophagy.

Abbreviatons:

AIM – Atg8-interacting motif;

EV – extracellular vesicle;

ILV – intralumenal vesicle;

LANDO – LC3-associated endocytosis;

LAP – LC3-associated phagocytosis;

LIR – LC3 interacting region;

mAtg8s – mammalian Atg8s;

mTOR – mechanistic target of rapamycin;

PAMP – pathogen associated molecular pattern;

PE – phosphatidylethanolamine;

PS – phosphatidylserine;

ROS – reactive oxygen species; SLR – sequestosome-like receptor;

TFEB – transcription factor EB;

TLR- Toll-like receptor;

UPS – ubiquitin proteasome system.

Corresponding Author(s):

Vojo Deretic, Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA; vderetic@salud.unm.edu

Conflict of interest statement:

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Please cite this article as:

Suresh Kumar, Jingyue Jia and Vojo Deretic (2021). Atg8ylation as a general membrane stress and remodeling re-sponse. Cell Stress 5(9): 128-142. doi: 10.15698/cst2021.09.255

© 2021 Kumar et al. This is an open-access article released under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which allows the unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduc-tion in any medium, provided the original author and source are acknowledged.

Abstract:

The yeast Atg8 protein and its paralogs in mammals, mammalian Atg8s (mAtg8s), have been primarily appreciated for their participation in autophagy. However, lipidated mAtg8s, including the most frequently used autophagosomal membrane marker LC3B, are found on cellular membranes other than autophagosomes. Here we put forward a hypothesis that the lipidation of mAtg8s, termed ‘Atg8ylation’, is a general membrane stress and remodeling response analogous to the role that ubiquitylation plays in tagging proteins. Ubiquitin and mAtg8s are related in sequence and structure, and the lipidation of mAtg8s occurs on its C-terminal glycine, akin to the C-terminal glycine of ubiquitin. Conceptually, we propose that mAtg8s and Atg8ylation are to membranes what ubiquitin and ubiquitylation are to proteins, and that, like ubiquitylation, Atg8ylation has a multitude of downstream effector outputs, one of which is autophagy.