Pluto Bioinformatics

GSE139989: Nuclear Parkin Regulates Transcriptional Response during Hypoxia

Bulk RNA sequencing

Purpose: The E3 ubiquitin ligase Parkin is a well-characterized regulator of mitochondrial autophagy (mitophagy); however, it is becoming increasingly appreciated to perform additional roles in various compartments of the cell. Our laboratory confirmed the presence of Parkin in the nucleus of various tissues (biochemical fractionations) and cell types (immunofluorescent imaging). Hypoxia-induced nuclear translocation of Parkin occured independent of the mitophagy regulator PINK1, and Parkinson's disease-associated mutants were restricted from the nuclueus. Accordingly, we inserted a nuclear localization sequence (NLS) at the n-terminus of Parkin and overexpressed both NLS Parkin and the wild-type protein in HeLa cells cultured at normoxia and hypoxia. Next-generation RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) was used to determine the effect of nuclear Parkin on cellular transcription.; Methods: mCherry-tagged NLS and wild-type Parkin were overexpressed in HeLa cells. Differential expression analyses were performed on Parkin vs. mCherry control cells and NLS Parkin vs. mCherry control cells at normoxia and following 12hr of hypoxia (n=3/group/condition). Paired-end sequencing was performed using the HiSeq4000. FastQC v0.11.3 was used for quality control, Trimmomatic v0.36 was used to trim reads which were aligned to the human genome (GRCh37.p13) using the STAR aligner v2.5.3a. Read quantification was performed with RSEM v 1.3.0 and the Gencode release 19. The R BioConductor packages edgeR and limma were used to implement the limma-voom method for differential expression analysis.; Results: During normoxia, Parkin had no effect on basal transcription; however, overexpression of NLS Parkin was associated with 168 differentially expressed genes (DEGs: fold-change </= 1.5, FDR < 0.05) relative to mCherry control cells. Following hypoxia, the transcriptome associated with the overexpression of wild-type Parkin more closely resembled that of NLS Parkin. Along these lines, Parkin overexpression during hypoxia coincided with a total of 158 DEGs, 37% of which were shared with NLS Parkin. Overlapping and shared DEGs among Parkin and NLS Parkin were implicated in cellular metabolism, HIF1 signaling and survival. Our follow up co-immunoprecipitation and real-time quantitative PCR studies demonstrated that Parkin interacts with the Estrogen Related Receptor Alpha (ERRa) to promote the induction of its downstream target genes.; Conclusions: Nuclear translocation of Parkin is a novel means by which this cytoprotective protein contributes to cellular homeostasis and especially critical during hypoxia. SOURCE: Justin,Michael,Quiles (jquiles@ucsd.edu) - Gustafsson University of California San Diego