title: FGT-1-mediated glucose uptake is defective in insulin/IGF-like signaling mutants in Caenorhabditis elegans.
abstract: Insulin signaling plays a central role in the regulation of facilitative glucose transporters (GLUTs) in humans. To establish Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) as a model to study the mechanism underlying insulin regulation of GLUT, we identified that FGT-1 is most likely the only functional GLUT homolog in C. elegans and is ubiquitously expressed. The FGT-1-mediated glucose uptake was almost completely defective in insulin/IGF-like signaling (IIS) mutants daf-2 and age-1, and this defect mainly resulted from the down-regulated FGT-1 protein expression. However, glycosylation may also be involved because OGA-1, an O-GlcNAcase, was essential for the function of FGT-1. Thus, our study showed that C. elegans can be a new powerful model system to study insulin regulation of GLUT.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Lactation and Metabolic Physiology Department of Animal and Veterinary Sciences University of Vermont Burlington VT USA; Present address: Drug Discovery Laboratory Wakunaga Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. Akitakata Hiroshima Japan.
authors.forename: Shun
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kitaoka
authors.affiliation: Department of Pharmacology College of Medicine University of Vermont Burlington VT USA.
authors.forename: Anthony D
authors.initials: AD
authors.lastname: Morielli
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Lactation and Metabolic Physiology Department of Animal and Veterinary Sciences University of Vermont Burlington VT USA.
authors.forename: Feng-Qi
authors.initials: FQ
authors.lastname: Zhao
keywords: Caenorhabditis elegans; glucose transporter; insulin/IGF‐like signaling; post‐transcriptional regulation