title: Cholesterol depletion induces autophagy.
abstract: Autophagy is a mechanism to digest cells' own components, and its importance in many physiological and pathological processes is being recognized. But the molecular mechanism that regulates autophagy is not understood in detail. In the present study, we found that cholesterol depletion induces macroautophagy. The cellular cholesterol in human fibroblasts was depleted either acutely using 5mM methyl-beta-cyclodextrin or 10-20microg/ml nystatin for 1h, or metabolically by 20microM mevastatin and 200microM mevalonolactone along with 10% lipoprotein-deficient serum for 2-3 days. By any of these protocols, marked increase of LC3-II was detected by immunoblotting and by immunofluorescence microscopy, and the increase was more extensive than that caused by amino acid starvation, i.e., incubation in Hanks' solution for several hours. The induction of autophagic vacuoles by cholesterol depletion was also observed in other cell types, and the LC3-positive membranes were often seen as long tubules, >50microm in length. The increase of LC3-II by methyl-beta-cyclodextrin was suppressed by phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase inhibitors and was accompanied by dephosphorylation of mammalian target of rapamycin. By electron microscopy, autophagic vacuoles induced by cholesterol depletion were indistinguishable from those seen after amino acid starvation. These results demonstrate that a decrease in cholesterol activates autophagy by a phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase-dependent mechanism.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anatomy and Molecular Cell Biology, Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine, Nagoya 466-8550, Japan.
authors.forename: Jinglei
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.forename: Yuki
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Ohsaki
authors.forename: Kumi
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Tauchi-Sato
authors.forename: Akikazu
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Fujita
authors.forename: Toyoshi
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Fujimoto
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001343:Autophagy / Q000502:physiology*; D041702:BALB 3T3 Cells; D002478:Cells, Cultured; D002784:Cholesterol / Q000378:metabolism*; D005347:Fibroblasts / Q000166:cytology* / Q000378:metabolism*; D006801:Humans; D051379:Mice
chemical_list: D002784:Cholesterol