Protein glycosylation modulates a wide variety of intracellular events and dysfunction of the glycosylation pathway has been reported in a variety of human pathologies. Endo-apyrases have been suggested to have critical roles in protein glycosylation and sugar metabolism. However, deciphering the physiological relevance of Endo-apyrases activity has actually proved difficult, owing to their complexity and the functional redundancy within the family. We report here that a UDP/GDPase, homologous to the human apyrase Scan-1, is present in the membranes of Caenorhabditis elegans, encoded by the ORF F08C6.6 and hereinafter-named APY-1. We showed that ER stress induced by tunicamycin or high temperature resulted in increased transcription of apy-1. This increase was not observed in C. elegans mutants defective in ire-1 or atf-6, demonstrating the requirement of both ER stress sensors for up-regulation of apy-1. Depletion of APY-1 resulted in constitutively activated unfolded protein response. Defects in the pharynx and impaired organization of thin fibers in muscle cells were observed in adult worms depleted of APY-1. Some of the apy-1(RNAi) phenotypes are suggestive of premature aging, because these animals also showed accumulation of lipofuscin and reduced lifespan that was not dependent on the functioning of DAF-2, the receptor of the insulin/IGF-1 signaling pathway.
INTRODUCTIONFrom observations on human diseases and mutant mice, it has become clear that glycosylation plays a major role in metazoan development (Schachter, 2004). Given the numerous physiological roles of glycoproteins, which encompass many aspects of normal cellular function and survival, the structures of glycan moieties vary markedly providing the chemical diversity required to fulfill the vast range of their biological tasks. The diversity of natural sugar structures is ultimately derived from the activities of the enzymes responsible for sugar attachment, namely glycosyltransferases, which determine the feasibility of natural product enzymatic glycodiversification. Lumenal ecto-nucleoside triand diphosphohydrolases (E-NTPDases) of the secretory pathway of eukaryotes hydrolyzes the nucleoside diphosphates (NDPs) generated by glycosyltransferases. The resulting nucleoside monophosphates (NMPs) are weaker inhibitors of glycosyltransferases than NDPs. NMPs also serve as antiporters in the transport of nucleotide-sugars from the cytosol to the lumen of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and Golgi apparatus. Glycosylation plays an important role in the biogenesis of secreted and transmembrane proteins and an elaborate mechanism ensure that only properly folded and assembled proteins exit the ER, a process termed "quality control."However, The ER's capacity to process proteins is relatively limited and the stress caused by accumulation of unfolded and misfolded proteins (ER stress) contributes to a number of important human diseases (Zhang and Kaufman, 2006). Cells respond to ER stress by activating the unfolded protein response (UPR), which limits new pr...