Autophagy is a major clearance route for intracellular aggregate-prone proteins causing diseases such as Huntington's disease. Autophagy induction with the mTOR inhibitor rapamycin accelerates clearance of these toxic substrates. As rapamycin has nontrivial side effects, we screened FDA-approved drugs to identify new autophagy-inducing pathways. We found that L-type Ca2+ channel antagonists, the K+ATP channel opener minoxidil, and the G(i) signaling activator clonidine induce autophagy. These drugs revealed a cyclical mTOR-independent pathway regulating autophagy, in which cAMP regulates IP3 levels, influencing calpain activity, which completes the cycle by cleaving and activating G(s)alpha, which regulates cAMP levels. This pathway has numerous potential points where autophagy can be induced, and we provide proof of principle for therapeutic relevance in Huntington's disease using mammalian cell, fly and zebrafish models. Our data also suggest that insults that elevate intracytosolic Ca2+ (like excitotoxicity) inhibit autophagy, thus retarding clearance of aggregate-prone proteins.

SummaryAutophagy, a major degradation process for long-lived and aggregate-prone proteins, affects various human processes, such as development, immunity, cancer, and neurodegeneration. Several autophagy regulators have been identified in recent years. Here we show that nitric oxide (NO), a potent cellular messenger, inhibits autophagosome synthesis via a number of mechanisms. NO impairs autophagy by inhibiting the activity of S-nitrosylation substrates, JNK1 and IKKβ. Inhibition of JNK1 by NO reduces Bcl-2 phosphorylation and increases the Bcl-2–Beclin 1 interaction, thereby disrupting hVps34/Beclin 1 complex formation. Additionally, NO inhibits IKKβ and reduces AMPK phosphorylation, leading to mTORC1 activation via TSC2. Overexpression of nNOS, iNOS, or eNOS impairs autophagosome formation primarily via the JNK1–Bcl-2 pathway. Conversely, NOS inhibition enhances the clearance of autophagic substrates and reduces neurodegeneration in models of Huntington's disease. Our data suggest that nitrosative stress-mediated protein aggregation in neurodegenerative diseases may be, in part, due to autophagy inhibition.

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Mitochondrial DNA polymerase from Drosophila embryos has been characterized with regard to its mechanism of DNA synthesis in the presence of single-stranded DNA-binding protein from Escherichia coli. The rate of DNA synthesis by DNA polymerase gamma was increased nearly 40-fold upon addition of single-stranded DNA-binding protein. Processivity of mitochondrial DNA polymerase was increased approximately 2-fold, while its intrinsic rate of nucleotide polymerization was unaffected. Primer extension analysis showed that the rate of initiation of DNA strand synthesis by DNA polymerase gamma was increased 25-fold in the presence of single-stranded DNA-binding protein. Our results indicate that the stimulation of Drosophila DNA polymerase gamma by single-stranded DNA-binding protein results primarily from an increased rate of primer recognition and binding. Concurrent achievement of maximal activity and processivity by mitochondrial DNA polymerase in the presence of binding protein suggests that DNA polymerase gamma, like other replicative DNA polymerases, associates with accessory factors in vivo to catalyze efficient and processive DNA synthesis.

We studied the activation of the human somatostatin5 receptor recombinantly expressed in CHO-K1 cells by using some newly available agonists and antagonists. Somatostatin-28 bound to this receptor with a higher affinity than somatostatin-14 and was more potent in increasing [35S]guanosine-5'-O-(3-thio)triphosphate ([35S]GTPgammaS) binding. Somatostatin-14-induced [35S]GTPgammaS binding to membranes from this cell line was decreased in a concentration-related manner by increasing concentrations of GDP and sodium chloride. At 50 mM (low) sodium, agonist EC50 values for stimulating [35S]GTPgammaS binding were lower than those at 150 mM (high) sodium and were closer to their respective affinity estimates (dissociation equilibrium constants) for binding to the receptor in the absence of sodium. Both agonist binding to the high affinity state of the receptor and agonist-induced [35S]GTPgammaS binding were abolished by pertussis toxin pretreatment. The putative somatostatin5 receptor-selective ligand L-362,855, unlike somatostatin-14 and somatostatin-28, showed differential intrinsic activity for stimulation of [35S]GTPgammaS binding, behaving as a partial agonist in high sodium and a full agonist in low sodium. In contrast, BIM-23056 did not behave as an agonist under any conditions studied but was able to antagonize somatostatin-14-induced [35S]GTPgammaS binding. We conclude that measurement of [35S]GTPgammaS binding mediated by somatostatin receptor activation in the presence of different concentrations of sodium chloride provides a useful functional assay for assessing the relative agonist efficacies of novel ligands identified from radioligand binding studies.

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